


Hot Blooded

by PingZing



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestor-Era, Ancestors, Gen, Old Alternia, Original Character(s), Trolls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-03-05
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PingZing/pseuds/PingZing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lowbloods don't typically have a nice life on Alternia. Hundreds of sweeps ago, the lowest of the low has had enough, and fights for revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another take on Karkat's ancestor. I can't help but feel like anybody identified as a mutant in Alternia's unforgiving caste system would have no choice but to be an incredible badass to survive. So...that's what Tarfus is going to be. Unfortunately, as we'll soon see, he's in a little over his head...

Tarfus Depinza was not having a good day, but that was nothing unusual. He spat blood and felt his captors recoil. Despite his situation, he couldn’t resist a smirk; damned highbloods were always so fastidious, so clean. It was like they thought even touching him or his blood would pollute them. If his tongue wasn’t swollen from him biting it, and his throat not raw from screaming for so long, he would’ve laughed. Here he was, about as broken and beaten as he could get, and those supposedly superior to him refused to leave him without two strong, healthy escorts and chains between his arms and legs.

What made it even funnier is that they were probably in the right to do so. Even now, he could spot flaws in their technique that, had he been able to stand under his own power, he could’ve exploited in less time than it took either of them to draw breath. The guard on the left’s stance was slightly too wide, and the one with a hand on his right shoulder was resting too much of his weight there. All Tarfus had to do was lean to his left to unbalance the right guard, trip the other with his leg, grab the guard’s weapon, block the swing coming from his right, gut the guard, and then turn and finish off the other one…

But alas, as he tried to move his body, all he got was a feeble twitch and lance of pain through his leg. A man could dream, couldn’t he?

He continued walking—it was more like being dragged, really—and tried to pass the time by sneering at the décor and passers-by. The low ceilings and dim blue lighting did nothing to ease Tarfus’ sense of claustrophobia. Though to be fair, that was more likely because he’d been captured, and was currently being dragged to meet Her Imperial Condescension herself. That or the way the interior designers insisted on surrounding every fucking light fixture in the complex with a globe of water, making every light source shimmer and ripple. Really, he got it. The royalty was water-themed. Enough already.

As for how he was currently en route to meet Her Royal Majesty in person, that was a tale in and of itself. He had been presented to the Grand Highblood in much the same state he found himself in now, sans quite a lot of abuse and, significantly, the chains. The Highblood had listened intently as the guards told the tale of a mutant-blood and his secret rebellion. How he had been discovered, and forced to move openly, or risk preemptive defeat. How his tiny band had been picked off one by one, and how Tarfus himself had only fought harder, until he at last stood alone. How he continued to fend off superior numbers alone for five straight minutes until at last he was overwhelmed by a cavalreaper charge.

How, as he had stood in the multicolored room in front of the Grand Highblood, he was so blood-spattered, that if he stood still he blended in with the walls.

The Highblood leaned forward, ever-present smile on his face and asked two questions. The first, was how’d he do it?

The second: where was the motherfucking punchline?

The guards glanced between themselves but said nothing. One visibly swallowed. They knew what happened if one failed to amuse the Highblood.

Tarfus looked up, stared the Highblood straight in the eye, and told him “Right here.”

He dropped to the floor, swept his right leg to the side and brought one of the escorts crashing to the ground. He snapped his left arm behind him and grabbed the second escort’s wrist in a moment of utter, blind luck. He rose, twisting and smiled grimly as the other troll’s wrist broke. Tarfus relieved him of his weapon and grimaced—a spear—standard cavalreaper fare but not his forte.

He ignored the injured and now weaponless guard to his left and turned just in time to narrowly miss being gutted by the other. He took a glancing slash along his side, tearing his shirt and staining it mutant candy-red along the gash. He gathered his own spear in two hands with the tip pointed skyward, and stepped inside the guard’s reach. That was the problem with spears, he thought, they’re utter shit when not used from musclebeastback. Just godawful weapons for foot soldiers used by pompous idiots, he mused, as he smashed the butt of his weapon into his attacker’s temple, knocking him to the ground and stunning him.

With both his opponents disabled or injured in just under ten seconds, it was a simple matter for Tarfus to finish them both.

Tarfus jammed the now-slick point of the spear into a gap between flagstones on the floor in front of him, folded his hands over the base, and rested his weight on it. He met the gaze of the Grand Highblood, still motionless on his throne, implacable smile still in place.

“Ba-dum tish,” Tarfus said. “That’s how.”

And while he’d been clubbed to the ground shortly afterward, he hadn’t missed the Grand Highblood’s widening smile, or what he’d said.

“Motherfuckin’ miracles.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our hero learns precisely what degree of trouble his actions have landed him in...

Tarfus knew that amusing the Grand Highblood was generally as good as a pardon. On the other hand, most did not usually do so by slaughtering those guarding them after plotting to overthrow the Empress. As far as he knew, he was sort of a special case.

So, as he was smashed to the ground for the second time that night, he wasn’t very surprised. By his reckoning, he had extended his lifespan by hours, perhaps days, but not many.  
He was surprised to find a detachment of Royal Honor Guardemolishers waiting for him outside. They wasted no time shackling him and seizing him from the Subjuggalators. The Guardemolishers were the strong right arm of the Empress, loyal to her personally, and her alone. Every one of them was a purple-blood and by extension, a water-dwelling aristocrat. Hand-picked from the ranks of the Threshecutioners and competent to a fault, every one of them was said to be as strong as five trolls. Each one of them wore an immaculately pressed black cloak with purple trim. Each wore the insignia of the Guardemolishers on their left breast; a violet double-ended trident. Beneath that the individual trolls wore their personal signs, printed much smaller.

Their presence here was more than merely troubling. As the Empress’ personal guard, it suggested that she was either nearby, or had sent them to fetch Tarfus personally. The first possibility made him smile ruefully—his intelligence had been right after all, for all the good it did now. The second possibility was…highly unpleasant. The Empress historically took an exceedingly dim view of assassination attempts. If she had sent the Royal Guardemolishers after him, Tarfus couldn’t imagine that he’d be made anything but an example of.

The Guardemolisher nearest him seized Tarfus by his wrist, and the one opposite him did the same for the opposite wrist. Their hands hovered next to the hafts of their sickles, ready to draw them if Tarfus showed the first sign of resistance. Their grip on his wrists was vise-tight, Tarfus dug his nails into the heel of his hand to avoid crying out. A third ‘Demolisher approached him, and stared mutely at Tarfus.

“You know,” Tarfus rasped, looking at the ground, “I must be doing something right if I got the Waterboys involved, eh? Means Queen Bitch is worried about something, doesn’t it? Sad little freak-blood like me being this much of a—”

Tarfus never even saw the other troll move, but he certainly felt the backhanded slap across the face. His head snapped backward from the blow, sending spittle and flecks of blood flying.

He laughed. “Oh, tough guy! Now I get it! It’s not me the Empress is afraid of! It’s my little secret. Can’t let it get out to everybody that the mutant’s got a bigger bone bulge than the entirety of the water-dwellers! After all, I don’t see you storming the castle alone and almost winning!”

Another backhand, from the other direction this time. He spat reddish gobs of mucus.

Tarfus was spouting nonsense and he knew it. He knew he was going to die soon, but goddammit, he refused to go down without doing as much damage as he could. If some of that damage was wigglerishly insulting the elite royal guard in the hope that they would lose their cool, then so be it. He didn’t care any more. If his fate was to die, he would simply laugh.

So he did. He laughed and he said, “That all you got? I’ve met hopbeasts that hit harder than that! C’mon, put some dorsal supportive spinal structure into it! Make the candy-red fly, big man!”

A fist to the face sent Tarfus reeling. The Guardemolishers’ faces remained impassive, but Tarfus swore he saw the one delivering the beating clenching his fists more tightly.

Tarfus took a moment to regain his bearings. He’d bitten his tongue after that blow, and he was seeing double. He laughed even harder.

“Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah…yeah, you like that, huh? Makes you feel good! Beat up the mutant! Beat up the freak! He can’t fight back, show him what he deserves! Or…” Tarfus paused, and lowered his voice, “…are you waxing black for me, buddy?”

Tarfus grinned as the Guardemolisher finally lost his stoic detachment. Tarfus caught a glimpse of the ‘Demolisher’s face contorted by (entirely platonic) rage for an instant before the knee caught him in the face and finally, blessedly, he lost consciousness.

 _Maybe I’ll be with them soon,_ was his last thought before blackness overcame him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tarfus is further abused and we learn more about his situation.

The following several hours passed in a haze of brightness and pain for Tarfus. When he awoke, it was to the searing heat and blinding light of the sun directly overhead. He immediately shut his ocular spheres, mentally cursing at the stab of pain the brief exposure caused them. As dusk began to fall, he was able to focus on something other than the sizzling pain in every inch of exposed skin and assess his situation.

He lay spread-eagled on top of some sort of transport vehicle, each limb chained to a different corner of the roof. A thin white cloth was stretched just above his head to offer some meager shelter from the sun—they wanted him cooked, not dead. Every muscle in his body ached. Between the physical effort required to accomplish what he had yesternight and the beating he had taken from the Guardemolisher, his body was spent. Now that he’d spent the majority of an entire day on the baking hot roof of a transport carriage, he doubted that he’d ever move willingly again. Fortunately, “willing” wasn’t in the cards because the carriage was slowing to a stop. Tarfus felt it shift, and heard the clunk clunk of somebody climbing the ladder to unchain him. A laugh burst from Tarfus’ throat as he realized it was the same troll that had beaten him earlier.

“You again! I thought you didn’t hate me!” Tarfus exclaimed. Every word was like sandpaper grating against his windhole, and his face twitched, suppressing a wince. “Or…don’t tell me. Don’t tell me you’re feeling red for me? I didn’t think you cared!”

The other troll rolled the protective canvas away and stepped onto the roof. Tarfus grunted as he was kicked in the midsection absentmindedly, and watched as the other troll began unlocking his chains from the carriage. It occurred to Tarfus that while he may be feeling dangerously suicidal at the moment, he didn’t have to be suicidal and uncomfortable. Maybe he’d try keeping his mouth shut for once, and spare himself some further agony. Between the sunburn that made it feel like his front half was perpetually submerged in boiling water, and the dull ache from…everywhere else, he’d had enough of hurting for a while.

Tarfus’ tormentor leaned over the side of the carriage. “Hey. Naxis.”

A troll on the ground looked up. “Sir?”

“Catch.”

Tarfus bit back a gasp as he was rolled off the edge of the carriage and plummeted a helpless several feet to the ground. He landed face first and a solid hammer of dirt to the chest knocked the wind out of him. Dust and grime worked its way into the cuts and burns on his face and Tarfus began hyperventilating. It felt like acid had been poured onto his face and was eating its way through to the bone, slowly consuming each and every nerve ending along the way.

“Sorry sir, I missed.” Distantly, Tarfus heard the sound of laughing.

Tarfus’ world spun and he dimly felt himself being dragged somewhere. His vision dimmed to a tiny circle at the center of his vision and all sound faded into an indistinct buzz. The sensation of something warm dripping down his cheek slowly brought him back to awareness. Sight returned just in time for him to see a droplet of bright red slide off his chin and fall to the floor.

The drop of blood spun and undulated as gravity seized it and drew it downward. Tarfus’ expanding and collapsing vascular system beat loudly in his ears and his ragged breathing sounded like a rampaging herd of trunkbeasts to his muddled senses. His pupils dilated and his world was reduced to a single revolving blob of failing, spinning, revolving, damning mutant candy red.

It splattered against the stone steps beneath his feet and left a tiny, asymmetrical pattern on the otherwise pristine white stone.

Tarfus fought a sense of rising panic. He closed his eyes and focused on controlling his breathing.

 _If anybody sees I’ll be culled!_ He was going to be culled anyway, he’d been captured.

 _If anybody finds out they’ll know I’m a freak and a mutant!_ The others knew and listened to him anyway. That was the reason they had been so close to success.

 _No one can know no one can know no one can kno—_

Tarfus was jerked out of his anxiety attack by a slap to the face. The pain brought clarity, and with clarity came anger.

Okay. If focus wouldn’t stop his panic, perhaps rage would.

Tarfus looked up at his aggressor. “What,” he spat, “the FUCK do you want?”

The Guardemolisher that had “failed” to catch him earlier—Naxis, Tarfus dimly remembered—looked at him evenly. “Nothing.” And he walked away.

Tarfus sputtered in incoherent rage and began growling in an effort to prevent the stream of obscenities he so dearly wanted to hurl with great force after the ‘Demolisher’s retreating back.

Remember, less pain good. Less pain good thing. Tarfus took a deep breath and grunted as his aching ribs creaked in protest. He took a shallower breath and tried to use it to calm down. He was only partially successful.

A new set of hands grabbed him by the armpits and hauled him to his feet. Tarfus looked to his sides to find he had been seized by a pair of Threshecutioners, each a blueblood. He wondered briefly where the Guardemolishers had disappeared to before he was roughly dragged forward by the two Threshecutioner guards. Tarfus took a moment to observe his surroundings.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard the crashing of waves on rocks, and smelled the salty air of the ocean. He was at the top of a short flight of steps leading to a large pair of double doors, both propped open. Each of the doors was inscribed with the Empress’ personal insignia; a crescent moon enclosing a smaller, round moon at the center of which was a double-ended trident. Tarfus sneered at the blatant symbolism. The Empress at the center of everything Alternian.

As the guards dragged him forward and the doors crashed shut behind him, courtesy of another set of guards, Tarfus realized where he was. The Empress typically spent her time underwater. While the royal palace was ostensibly her seat of power, much of the time it was occupied only by the Grand Highblood and those under his command. Generally, the Empress’ appearances at the palace were purely ceremonial. If matters required her attention on land, the Empress occupied one of several compounds on the coast. If the smell of the sea from outside and the aqualamps inside were any indication, Tarfus was inside one of those now.

Tarfus drew the obvious conclusion and grimaced.

The Empress was here, and demanded his presence.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Audience with the enemy.

Tarfus made good on his promise to himself earlier and sneered at all the passerby he could. One particularly nervous looking blueblood carrying a hefty stack of papers jumped when Tarfus made eye contact and grinned at her. Papers spilled to the floor and the blueblood squeaked and scrambled to pick them up. Tarfus let out a rasping cackle that sounded demented even to his own ears. He stopped when one of his captors jabbed him in side with the haft of a sickle. Tarfus’ vision went grey, and he gasped and focused on not passing out from the pain.

Okay. Maybe he would refrain from _audibly_ sneering. But that didn’t mean he was cowed or anything. He was just refocusing his priorities, that was all.

He continued to refocus until he stumbled and discovered that he was being led down a wide stairway. It continued downward until Tarfus could barely see the bottom before finally leveling off. Each step was agony on his aching legs, and when they reached the base of the stairs, Tarfus shivered. It felt colder and damper down here. The halls above had at least featured skylights at regular intervals. Now the azure-and-violet halls were lit only by the muted, flickering light of the aqualamps. For the second time that evening he reassured himself that he wasn’t claustrophobic.

The hall dead-ended at a wall covered in a long bas-relief mural featuring pivotal moments in Alternian history. The pivotal moments featuring waterdwellers, at least. Tarfus thought he recognized the rise of Her Holiness the First Empress of Alternia, as she was surrounded by prostrate finned trolls. Immediately following that was the subjugation of the landdwellers by the now-united waterdwelling trolls led by Her Holiness. Following this were several scenes he didn’t recognize, including, oddly, what appeared to be a land dweller holding a scythe aloft atop a hill. Further along the wall, there was some sort of tentacled monstrosity screeching while meteors rained from the heavens.

Dividing the mural in half was a large, imposing steel door that would not have looked out of place in a military vault. The edges were studded with bolts, and its face was otherwise completely featureless. Tarfus could discern no method of opening it.

The guards and Tarfus, by extension, stopped. Standing on either side of the door was a single guardemolisher. Each of them was staring directly at Tarfus and ignoring the two trolls that held him. _At least they know who the real threat here is_ , he thought with a rueful smile.

The guard on Tarfus’ left spoke up. “Here to deliver the prisoner.”

“You may leave,” one of the guardemolishers said without removing his gaze from Tarfus.

The two Threshecutioner guards glanced at each other, shrugged, and shoved Tarfus forward. They turned left. Tarfus stumbled forward and interposed his hands between the ground and the floor an instant before his forehead would’ve hit stone. Tarfus slowly made his way to his knees then, agonizingly, his feet. He looked up. The guardemolishers continued to stare at him, but remained rooted to the spot.

“Well?” He demanded, “C’mon, I don’t have all fucking day.”

One of the ‘demolisher’s eyes flicked to the stairwell behind Tarfus for a split second. Tarfus’ face lit up in understanding.

“Oh, of course, how idiotic of me. I’m supposed to run,” Tarfus nodded at the stairs behind him, “Screaming and then beg for my life when you catch me and beat me. Do I have that right? Let’s just skip all the pleasantries, shall we? Otherwise, I think I’ll just take a nap on the floor and wait it out.”

Tarfus gave a mental grimace as the ‘demolishers maintained their piercing gaze. It’s an old legislacerator trick, the intimidating silence. Fortunately, he’d known a legislacerator once, and she had admitted to him that most intimidating silences only work if the intimidatee is already nervous about something. Armed with this knowledge, Tarfus resolved to simply not be nervous. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

He was already facing imminent death.

Finally, one of the ‘demolishers broke eye contact and turned to face the steel door in the center of the wall. He knocked twice on the door and Tarfus smiled inwardly and congratulated himself on the small victory.

A tiny slot in the door opened to reveal a pair of eyes. The slot closed again and the door began raising itself into the ceiling. As it did so, it revealed several long teeth sunk several inches into grooves cut into the floor along its base. In addition to that, the door was at least six inches thick.

The guardemolishers didn’t move from their positions. Tarfus realized that they intended for him to walk through the door himself. He weighed his options. He could remain stubbornly in place and wait for the guardemolishers to physically drag him into the room, probably acquiring a few new injuries in the process. Or, he could follow his earlier plan and avoid further pain.

He walked through the door.

Inside was an unadorned square room, with another, identical steel door set against the far wall, again flanked by a pair of guardemolishers. Tarfus assumed that it was one of them that had looked out of the hatch in the door behind him. The door behind him shut with a rush of air, and Tarfus’ ears popped. As he stepped forward, he heard the floor beneath him clanking with each step he took. He looked down and discovered that the floor was simple grating, beneath which concrete sloped into a central drain. He looked back at the door behind him, and the door in front of him.

A completely sealed room with a drain at the bottom…some kind of airlock?

Tarfus had no time to ponder the room’s bizarre architectural engineering before the far door opened, and the guardemolishers repeated their staring performance. Tarfus gave them a halfhearted glare before starting forward, only to be stopped by a pair of crossed scythes.

“None may enter without Her Condescension’s word.”

Tarfus’ eye twitched. He was tired of being jerked around. “Either you let me in and allow me to face my impending and excruciating death myself, or I’m going to fucking fight my way in, propriety be damned!”

A voice drifted out of the open door. Tarfus’ view of its owner was blocked by a wall just inside the door that created a sort of entry hall. “Do let him in. I’ve been expecting this one for some time.”

The guardemolishers glared at him a moment longer before uncrossing their weapons and stepping away from the entrance. They continued staring at Tarfus, even as he crossed the threshold and entered the room beyond. Tarfus found himself face-to-face with the aforementioned wall and discovered that his feet had become leaden weights attached to his legs. It felt like squirming larva were wriggling in his guts and he had to focus on breathing steadily to keep calm. Despite all his bravado, he still didn’t want to die.

 _Man the fuck up, Depinza. You lost, and now you get to deal with it.  
_  
He sucked in a shuddering breath and stepped around the privacy wall.

“Good evening, peasant,” said the Empress.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Face to face with royalty.

She was sitting in a plush armchair, with a goblet dangling lightly from her right hand, wearing a smug grin. Completing the image of a ruler at ease was the double-headed golden culling fork propped against her chair. She wore a golden circlet emblazoned with her symbol on her forehead, and a form fitting black dress with light purple trim. A dress with slits up the sides; her legs were left free to move in case she had to run or fight. Very sensible, Tarfus noted grudgingly.

There she was, right in front of him. The woman he had plotted for sweeps to overthrow, and hated for even longer. Alone.

Vulnerable.

Tarfus leapt forward as quickly as the shackles about his feet allowed, intending to grab the fork and kill the woman who had been the bane of his existence for so long. The Empress was faster. She snatched up the fork and swung it forward and low, tripping Tarfus. He stumbled forward and the Empress darted out of her chair as Tarfus crashed into it. He spun around just in time to catch the shaft of the fork under his chin. He tried to kick out but the Empress deflected his kick with her knee. He snapped his arms up for a punch. She jerked backward and grabbed the chain between his hands and used his own momentum to fling him forward. He flew from the chair and landed face first on the ground in front of it. He groaned and rolled over. This time the culling fork was pointed business-end first at his throat. He breathed and one of the tines pierced his skin, drawing forth a tiny droplet of blood.

And she was still wearing that stupid smirk.

“Do not be ashamed,” she said. “Everyone tries. They never seem to wonder why I don’t keep my Guard in here.” She withdrew the culling fork, but maintained her defensive posture. She was no fool.

Tarfus lay on the floor for several moments, panting. He realized that the ‘demolishers outside hadn’t even reacted to the sound of their skirmish. She wasn’t lying.

“Maybe you’re just that repulsive,” he managed. Not his best comeback, but it’d have to do.

The ever-present grin widened. “Have you wondered why you’re still alive, threshecutioner Depinza of the Twelfth Legion? In fact, did it ever occur to you to wonder why you were never culled for your filthy, mutant blood?

“You were kept alive to serve, peasant. Your sole purpose in life has been to serve the glory of the Alternian Empire. You are no mystery to us. Every minute of your pathetic, unworthy life has been at our pleasure. That you live tonight, at this very moment, is at my pleasure, as I’ve demonstrated. That you dare—”

“Look,” Tarfus wheezed, interrupting, “This is great and all, but if you’re just going to monologue at me all night, I’ll off myself and save you the trouble.”

The Empress drew back, her grin gone and her expression blank and inscrutable. “Very well, I shall cut to the heart of the matter.” She turned to face the rear wall of the room.

The wall in question, Tarfus suddenly noticed, was clear—made of glass, or something equally transparent. He had completely missed it during his struggle with the Empress. Behind the wall was an unbroken expanse of murky water, still dimly lit by the fading rays of the setting sun above. Suddenly, the airlock outside the room, the long stairwell and the sense of pressure as he’d descended made sense to Tarfus.

He was underwater. The only thing between him and thousands of gallons of crushing, pitiless sea was a flimsy transparent panel. The only thing between the Empress and a those same gallons was that same panel. All he had to do was find a way to stand up, crack reinforced glass with his bare hands, and somehow not get speared in the process. No problem.

He groaned and allowed his head to fall back to the floor. He might as well listen to what she had to say; it wasn’t like he was going anywhere.

“You lived because you were useful, threshecutioner. You overcame your natural deficiencies and performed admirably in your capacity as a soldier. There were those more…progressive of the nobility that had high hopes for you. That perhaps you would rise above your inherent flaws as a peasant. But I assured them that blood would out, and so it did.

“Your assassination plot was never a secret. That you were discovered when you were was no accident. Had you been exposed earlier, you would’ve died when the subjuggalators came for you. Had you been exposed later, the possibility, however minute, that you would achieve your goal was inexcusable. It is through my will alone that you yet live.”

Tarfus reconsidered his earlier decision to listen to what she had to say. “If that’s going to be a fucking problem, my earlier offer still stands. Because holy shit, woman, get to the goddamn point,” he said listlessly.

The Empress turned and approached Tarfus. She gave him an unreadable stare for a moment and then his arm exploded with pain. Faster than he could track, she had pierced his left wrist with the culling fork and pinned it to the stone floor. She withdrew the fork and Tarfus clenched his right hand into a fist and beat it against the floor to avoid crying out. The Empress held the bloody end of the fork up to eye level and scrutinized the red liquid coating the points before setting it back down. Tarfus’ vision grew blurry, exhaustion finally seeping into his bones, and his eyes glazed over with pain and weariness.

“Do I have your attention?” She asked, her voice never wavering from its infuriatingly calm tone. “I can see I am trying your patience. Allow me to make my point, then. You were destined to fail from the very start. Auva, would you like to assist me in his elucidation?” She said, looking up.

Tarfus rolled his head to the side to follow the Empress’ gaze. Another troll entered from a side room. The newcomer took tentative steps forward, and clutched one arm with the other. She was looking down and one of her protruding fangs was worrying at her lower lip. Despite Tarfus’ increasingly unreliable vision, he’d know that nervous gesture anywhere. He’d schemed alongside the owner of that gesture, spent hours talking to her, and on one memorable occasion, fought beside her. He’d been paler than sun-bleached paper for her, and his one regret about this unbelievable clusterfuck of a situation—besides its failure, of course—was that she’d been killed before he’d been able to confess his feelings. Except, apparently, she hadn’t been killed after all.

Auva Madris, his second in command, was alive.

She was alive and taking orders from the Empress.

What in the almighty, bulge-fondling _fuck_ was going on here?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betrayal.

“Madris. What in the name of the Mother Grub’s hideous writhing pustules is going the fuck on,” Tarfus croaked. He meant to scream it, but his throat wouldn’t cooperate, and all he got was a papery rasp.

Auva looked down and away. Her fangs drew a tiny droplet of jade green from her lower lip.

Tarfus’ eyes narrowed. “I asked you a question, Madris. As your commanding officer, I order you to give me some goddamn answers!”

“Yes,” said the Empress, “Why don’t you answer your commander officer, Infilterrogator Madris?”

Tarfus’ face froze, and his features paled. “No. No, tell me she’s lying.”

The infilterrogators. Like the guardemolishers, but more insidious; they were spies of highest caliber, spoken of in hushed whispers, by rebel and loyalist alike. Most trolls assumed they were just nothing more than a myth. Tarfus knew better. You never knew they were there until the subjuggalators were bursting through the door and one of your number was conveniently absent. They trained their members to interrogate, to reconnoiter, to assassinate, and to infiltrate.

To destroy the enemies of the Empire from the inside out.

Auva flinched at Tarfus’ words, but refused to turn and look at him. Tarfus lurched to his feet and stumbled into her. He clutched at her shirt to prevent himself from falling and drew his face to hers.

“Look at me. LOOK AT ME!” He snarled.

She raised her eyes to meet his. Tarfus jerked backward, an expression of horror working its way across his features. Her expression was filled with sorrow and self-loathing, and her gaze broke away from his almost immediately. It was all the confirmation Tarfus needed—Auva had always been a terrible liar, especially to him. For several long seconds, Tarfus stood there, clutching her shirt, shaking with fatigue.

“You...”

Tarfus jerked Auva close again.

“Utter...”

And with a grunt, shoved her away, leaving her to stumble backward and land in an undignified heap on the floor.

“BITCH!” He roared. “Everything you ever said to me was a lie? Is that it?! I thought you fucking believed in our cause! I thought you fucking believed in me! Well skin me and hang me out to dry over the tanneruinators' vats! I must be the owner of stupidest fucking carcass to ever somehow crawl its way out of the brooding caverns! Except, oh no, wait, it was _your despicable traitorous self's fault!”_

Tarfus swayed on his feet and black spots swam in front of his eyes. He forced himself to ignore them and rounded on the Empress, long past caring about the consequences of anything he said or did.

“And you know what, fuck you too; I hope you die forgotten and powerless and alone like the manipulative nookstained whore that you are!”

And still, the Empress' thrice-damned grin did not waver an inch. “Forgotten and powerless and alone? Like you?”

Tarfus managed a single, enraged step toward the Empress before her words sunk in and their import nailed him to the spot.

He was alone.

All his allies had been killed. That, or they had been traitors all along. He would be forgotten, save for perhaps a few impressed subjuggalators or irritated guardemolishers. The Empress would likely wash her hands of him the instant she had him killed and promptly forget about him. Auva...Auva had lied to him. Lied to him all along. That hurt the most, that somebody he had trusted—somebody he had once wanted as a _moirail_ —had never been true to him. And he was powerless. If the Empress was telling the truth had always been powerless; she had known about his revolutionaries, had known about his plot, had known about his aberrant blood, and had simply let him persist because he was useful at best, or mostly harmless at worst.

His head felt like it had been stuffed full of fibrous absorbency spheres. The world around him went muffled, as though he were hearing everything from a great distance. His eyes went unfocused and the black spots in his vision multiplied. The world spun, and he found himself suddenly staring at knees, rather than faces.

 _Oh_ , he thought, _I'm falling_.

He'd gone from kneeling to standing very suddenly, and now he went from kneeling to laying down slowly, soundlessly, inch by inch. His vision faded completely, and he felt his eyes closing. He wanted to fight it because something very important was happening. Something he needed to stay awake for. The others needed him, needed him to be awake, but he was just so _tired_ , and everything hurt so much. A short nap wouldn't hurt anybody...

He just wished the floor weren't so fucking cold.

**

Auva Madris stared uncomfortably at her former commander lying unconscious on the floor. She had seen him when she walked into the room and had made every effort to look somewhere else ever since. The entire front half of his body looked like it had been cooked, and there wasn't a single part of his face that wasn't bruised, cut or swollen. His unnaturally bright-red blood made every single injury look as though it were burning and angry; Auva knew that was just her imagination at work, but it hurt to look at all the same. What hurt the most was knowing that every inch of grey flesh that was peeling away to expose dull cooked-lobster red below, every half-clotted cut on his face, every blue-black bruise was her fault. She stared sadly at the crumpled form below and noted with dull horror that there was a hole in his arm that bore straight through from one side to the other. It was still leaking blood.

“Hm,” said the Empress. “I expected better. For a gutterblooded aberration, he showed a great deal of promise.” She peered quizzically down at Tarfus' prostrate form for a moment before turning away to gaze out into the depths of the ocean. She stepped toward the wall, and placed her palm against the glass. “Infilterrogator Madris.”

Auva snapped to attention. “Yes, Your Condescension.” She did not salute, but infilterrogators were not required to—discretion was the better part of not getting brutally murdered by counterspies.

“You are aware of my preferred method of disposing of would-be assassins.” It was not a question.

A ball of ice slipped down Auva's throat and froze her insides solid. _She wouldn't. She'd promised._

“Death, in the most publicly visible manner possible, Your Condescension,” she replied, with not a waver in her voice.

“Hm. Yes, I suppose that's true. Such a shame that extenuating circumstances require that I break tradition,” said the Empress conversationally.

“My Lady?” said Auva, unable to believe her ears.

“A promise is a promise, Infilterrogator. I keep mine, and this one shows a great deal of it. He is not to be harmed. The records will show that Threshecutioner Tarfus Depinza died an unsung death at the hands of my loyal guardemolishers when he attempted to kill me in my own quarters. I release this nameless troll to your tender mercies, Miss Madris. I trust he will enjoy a swift recovery. You are dismissed.”

It was a testament to Auva's discipline that all she said was “Yes, my Lady,” before scooping up Tarfus' fallen form and carrying him down a side hallway.

The Empress waited until she was certain Auva had left earshot before muttering to herself, “I wish you the best of luck, Auva Madris and Tarfus Depinza.

“I fear you're going to need it.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simpler times.  
> Well.  
> Maybe.

“Name?”

“Depinza.”

“Taffus?”

“Close enough.”

The bureacraniectometrist rolled her eyes. “Color?”

“What? All that needle-stabbing you did yesterday and you don’t have it recorded?”

The paper-pushed stared at him levelly.

Tarfus sighed. “Red.”

The 'craniectometrist dug around in a box at her feet and withdrew a maroon Cancer patch. She turned and retrieved a uniform, complete with pair of boots atop, and handed the entire package to Tarfus. “You're to sew the patch onto your left breast pocket.” She handed him a slip of paper. “Your groupblock assignment.”

“What? I don't know how to fucking sew!”

The other troll lifted a single eyebrow, but otherwise did not change her expression. “So learn. Next!”

Tarfus grumbled to himself and stalked away. He'd joined the threshecutioners to learn how to thresh some motherfuckers, not learn domestic chores for girls.

He followed the signs to groupblock F and entered. It was a long and narrow room with a series of recuperacoons along either side with a locker at the foot of each. A series of high windows along either wall let in narrow shafts of moonlight, creating a pink and green checkerboard along the floor. Trolls were milling about, some sitting on the edges of their recuperacoons, others standing and talking, some simply staring into space. Tarfus stood in front of the doorway for a moment, then looked down at the slip of paper he'd been given.

There it was, his locker and recuperacoon assignment. F12. A cursory glance revealed that all the lockers in the room began with F, so he located number 12 with little difficulty. He opened it and discovered it to be completely empty save for a tiny sewing kit.

 _How thoughtful of them_ , he thought as he removed the kit and stowed the boots.

He perched on the edge of his recuperacoon and snuck a glance around the room. Others were, like him, staring blankly at the sewing kit. Some had made it as far as removing the needle and thread. Tarfus looked back down at the kit, and shrugged. How hard could it be?

Ten minutes later, he had a passably-attached patch on the front pocket of his uniform. He flung the sewing kit back into the locker just as the room fell silent. Tarfus looked up, and followed the room’s gaze to the doorway.

Silhouetted in the doorframe by the duochromatic light was a thin, wiry troll. She stepped into the groupblock and even Tarfus had to bite back a gasp. Every young troll who hadn’t spent their formative sweeps living in a cave (and even some who had) would’ve recognized the newcomer. From her single half-horn—the other one-and-a-half snapped off in combat and surgically removed through torture respectively—to her missing left arm, she was a living legend. She’d risen to prominence in the War of Unity and earned an officer’s commission. Wearing the mantle of command, she’d proceeded to decimate every single opponent unfortunate enough to oppose her. She’d personally saved the Empress’ life in the latter days of the 13th Perigree’s War, losing her arm in the process and then using said dismembered arm to bludgeon the attackers to death.

She’d been famously passed over for angeneralship time after time, and had ultimately been forcibly retired after refusing to obey a direct order from a purple-blooded superior. Her insubordination had won the battle, saved hundreds of lives, and cost her her career. She now spent her dawnlight sweeps training the new threshecutioner recruits.

Her name was Kulath Stratet and she was the closest thing Tarfus had to an idol. She was the only greenblood in recorded history to ever have a chance at being an angeneral and had a notable disregard for the hemospectrum.

What the recruitment ads featuring her likeness had failed to communicate however was her stature. Stratet was easily the shortest troll in the room by a full six inches. A recruit by the door snickered and before the room finished its collective gasp, Stratet was in the recruit’s face.

“Something funny?” She demanded. Her voice was scarcely above a whisper, and every single person in the room heard it. The silence crystallized into dread before Stratet continued, “Take my sickle.” She thrust the weapon at the unlucky recruit and turned to face the room at large. “Clear the center of the block! Follow,” she said to the recruit.

Anybody in the middle of the room backed away as if they’d suddenly discovered it was full of venomous slitherbeasts, and Stratet led the stunned recruit to the clear space.

Stratet turned to face the recruit and projected her voice to the room at large. “Consider this your first lesson, you worthless overgrown larvae!” She shifted her body so her right side was facing the recruit and he presented the smallest possible profile to her opponent. Her voice dropped down to a conversational level. “I’ll let you have the first attack, boy. Any time.”

The recruit looked at the sickle in his hands. Looked at Stratet, unarmed and waiting. Back at the sickle. Back at Stratet. “Is surrender an option?”

Stratet chuckled. “I see we’ve got a thinker! No, you surrender and I’ll cull you myself. Now attack me!”

Tarfus was just close enough to hear the recruit mutter “This is such a bad idea…” before lunging at Stratet with the sickle.

Tarfus barely saw what happened next. Stratet jerked to the side and slammed a fist into the recruit’s chest. As the recruit stumbled forward, Stratet jerked her fist up into his chin. In one smooth motion, Stratet stepped into the recruit’s reach, grabbed him by the wrist, and jerked it upward. There was a _keerack_ as the recruit’s wrist broke and the sickle flew from nerveless fingers.

Stratet shifted her hand to the recruit’s shoulder and launched herself knee-first into the recruit’s gut. The recruit went down hard, and Stratet rode him to the floor. The sickle had encountered gravity at this point, and was now on a direct course for the recruit’s exposed neck. An instant before the sickle would’ve pierced the recruit’s throat, Stratet’s hand snapped up and grabbed it by the handle. The tip of the sickle stopped a hairsbreadth from making the floor a more colorful place.

The recruit opened one eye and exhaled slightly before freezing again. A droplet of teal blood blossomed where the sickle-point met his neck. Stratet held it there for a moment before standing up. The recruit chose to enjoy the benefits of a horizontal position for the foreseeable future.

“There were more things wrong with this little _wiggler’s_ attack here than I care to name! Let’s see if any of you know any better! Any volunteers care to tell me what he did wrong?”

“He overextended himself in his attack?” said someone in the back.

Stratet sighed and brought her fist to his forehead. Then, with explosive violence, flung the sickle away. It stuck in the wall where it quivered like an angry buzzbeast. “No! His first mistake was doing what his opponent expected! When your one-armed opponent gives you a weapon and tells you to attack her, you’d damn well better expect that she’s got something planned! Wiggler down here gets points for seeing it coming, but loses them all for _attacking anyway!_ ”

Tarfus had completely failed to hear much of that tirade, due to the sickle that had very nearly impaled his arm, and was currently pinning him to the wall by the sleeve of his jacket. He carefully leaned away from the still-vibrating weapon and tore his jacket sleeve away from the sickle. As he did so, he felt a stab of pain in his upper arm and looked at the torn sleeve. A ball of lead dropped into his digestive sac and he quickly slapped his hand over the wound, and prayed that nobody had noticed. His eyes darted from side to side wildly. In his panic, he didn’t notice that the tension of earlier had dissolved, and Stratet, no longer the center of attention, was approaching him.

“Gotcha with the sickle there, did I? Come on, let’s see the wound, last thing I need is some priss passing out on me first day to blood loss…” she muttered before jerking Tarfus’ hand away from his arm.

Stratet stared at Tarfus injury for a long moment before looking him in the eye. Tarfus’ vascular pump was jackhammering wildly in his chest and he was beginning to sweat. _He was going to be found out, he was going to be exposed he was going to be culled he was going to_ die, and then Stratet jerked his shirtsleeve lower, covering the wound.

“Yer fine. Suck it up…Depinza, is it? You’ll get much worse, in time. If you’re any good, that is.” And Stratet almost smiled. Her lips twitched, anyway. She turned and strode to the doorway of the groupblock again. “Everybody on the training field in five, get your bulges in gear! If any one of you is late, that’s grounds for immediate culling!” And she walked out.

Tarfus stared after her, panting in exhausted relief.

What the hell had just happened?


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time he meets Auva Madris, she saves his life.

Tarfus fell to the dust with a grunt and lay where he fell, little puffs of dirt fountaining into the air with every breath. He groaned and regretted every decision he’d ever made up to and including the one where he’d agreed to serve as a demonstration aide for drill sergeantagonist Stratet. He was positive that she was not officially of any rank any longer, but he doubted anyone dared to correct her. She was terrifying. If the display earlier in the groupblock had been Stratet unsheathing her claws, then what she’d done to Tarfus in the past several hours had been her unleashing a comically oversized broadsword. And then wielding it with terrifying efficiency. On Tarfus’ entire body.

Repeatedly.

Tarfus shook his head. His metaphors were getting away from him, and that was always a sign that he was pushing his limits. He pushed himself up off the ground, and bounced to his feet, swaying slightly, sickle in hand, ready for whatever Stratet threw at him next. He was not ready for her to be facing away, addressing the gathered prospective-threshecutioners at large.

He didn’t wait for the crowd’s stares to give him away, and charged Stratet’s back. She’d taught them that there was no such thing as fighting dirty—only fighting to win. He intended to show her what he’d learned. If he happened to work out some aggression in the process, well, that was just a bonus, right?

Without looking away or interrupting her speech, Stratet’s sickle jerked out, caught Tarfus’ as it was descending and twisted, sending Tarfus’ weapon spinning out of his hand. Stratet jammed an elbow into Tarfus’ gut and brought her hand up in a close-fisted backhand against Tarfus’ nose. He staggered back, stumbled, and fell down into a sitting position, clutching his nose. It wasn’t bleeding, luckily, but it’d smart for the rest of the day.

“Can anyone tell me what Depinza here did wrong?” Stratet barked, resheathing her sickle. Before anyone had a chance to answer, she continued, “Of course you can’t! He didn’t do a damn thing wrong! He attacked his opponent when she was unprepared and with intent to kill! The reason he failed was because he’s a miserable failure of an excuse for a threshecutioner-wannabe! And if he’s a miserable failure, I don’t think I have the vocabulary for what that makes you!” She glanced at the horizon and nodded. “That’s all the time we have to stamp the failure out of you today! I expect you out here dark and early tomorrow!”

She turned to Tarfus, who was still perched on the ground. At her raised eyebrow he wearily raised himself to his feet and saluted halfheartedly. Stratet threw back a lazy salute, and Tarfus slumped into a slouch. “Am I going to be your training dummy again tomorrow?”

Stratet’s backhand caught him across the cheek and sent Tarfus reeling. “You will address your superiors with respect, soldier!” Her expression relaxed and she continued, “As to your question…I suspected that you showed promise. I tested that theory and you didn’t disappoint. I’ll do everything in my power to force my recruits to reach their full potential. If that means kicking your ass every day until you succeed, then that’s what I’ll do. If at any point you don’t feel like you can handle it, you’re welcome to back out. I’m sure I’ll have no trouble finding another wet recruit to box around for hours at a time.”

“So what? This is all in my best interest? You picked me out of nearly a hundred others just because you thought I ‘showed promise’?”

Stratet looked pointedly down at Tarfus’ arm. “I see you’ve recovered from your little mishap earlier.” She looked back up, and her stare drilled into Tarfus’. “No, it’s not just because you show promise. It’s because you’re going to need the extra training if you intend to live past thirteen sweeps old. I’m sure you’re well aware of the fact the world is not a kind place to the less fortunate.” Stratet paused for a moment to allow her words to sink in. “That’s enough talk for today. Dismissed, soldier.” And just like that, she walked away.

Tarfus glared at her retreating back for a moment before flinging his sickle down in disgust. And then immediately regretted it because that meant he had to bend down to retrieve it and _auuuuughhh every single muscle was sore already goddammit_. He stalked back toward the groupblock, wincing every third step and cursing Kulath Stratet’s name every other step.

So she thought she was doing him a favor because she knew he’d need to be tough, huh? And apparently doing favors had nothing to do with actually teaching him how to fight, but how to get his ass kicked in front of his entire training group. There might have been some actual lessons to be learned in between each of the merciless beatings he’d suffered at her hands tonight, but he’d be damned if he could pick them out amongst the whirlwind of agony and embarrassment. He guessed she thought that maybe a little bit of humility was good for him. Well fuck her. He’d grown up as humble as could be, thank you very much. He’d bet beetles to baked pastry that she’d enjoyed a cushy life growing up as greenblood. She’d probably never spent days at a time terrified of going outside after getting a cut she couldn’t hide. She’d probably never spent weeks barely subsisting on what food she could find around her hive because her lusus had been beaten to within an inch of his life by other five-sweep-olds for having the gall to raise a mutant. She’d probably never curled up to sleep at dawn next to her lusus, whispered entreaties to _please get better please don’t die I don’t hate you I promise_ flowing ceaselessly while her lusus tried in vain to comfort her with bloodied claws.

Not that Tarfus would know anything about that.

Tarfus face was locked into a grimace with a dash of snarl as he stalked into an alley between two buildings. He was so wrapped up in his brooding that he didn’t notice when the other end of the alley was blocked by a body until he bumped into it. He looked up into the sneering face of another troll with a prominent pockmark scar on his chin.

Tarfus glared. “Get the fuck out of my way.”

Scar-chin smiled. “Sorry. Just happened to notice you had a little something on your arm.” The other troll reached into the tear in Tarfus’ jacket and ripped off the bandage covering his cut from earlier.

Fresh, bright red blood flowed from the reopened wound. Tarfus jerked back and swore. He looked up at his aggressor and bared his teeth.

“Saw it when the sergeantagonist sliced you open earlier. Don’t think you can hide your freaky mutant blood from the rest of us, gutter trash.” Two other trolls stepped out of bright spots where the rising sun’s light had hidden them. One was tall with thin, slender horns, and the other was of medium build with a pronounced fangy overbite.

“Guess that didn’t take long,” Tarfus muttered before delivering an uppercut to Scar-chin’s chin. _No such thing as fighting dirty,_ he thought grimly, _only fighting to win._

Scar-chin went down hard and scrambled to get up before Tarfus stomped on his chest and used him as a springboard to launch himself at Slender-horns. While the other troll was focused on his fists, Tarfus lashed out with his foot and caught Slender-horns in the upper thigh. When Tarfus landed, he used his momentum to push forward and knock his attacker off balance. The other troll stumbled back a few feet, and Tarfus was able to circle around, finally out of the alley. Tarfus darted forward and kicked Scar-chin in the head while he had the chance. No sense fighting more opponents if he didn’t have to.

The other two aggressors overcame their surprise at Tarfus’ violent opening and charged him. Tarfus caught a punch to the side and was tackled by Fang-face. There was a moment of weightlessness as both he and his opponent were airborne, followed by a teeth-rattling crash as back met dirt. Tarfus didn’t waste a second, and used his momentum, pushing up as he bounced, forcing his attacker a few inches off of him. He rolled out from underneath Fang-face and made it halfway to standing before Slender-horns grabbed him by his collar and yanked him up. Slender-horns drew his fist back and rammed it into Tarfus’ face. His vision blacked out for a moment and he saw stars. He came to just in time to spot a second fist on a collision course for his face. Thinking fast he looked down and to the side, and prayed he got the angle right.

A choked curse and his skull rattling like a struck bell indicated he had. He’d angled his head so the other troll had punched him straight in the horn. His weren’t sharp enough to pierce, but they were certainly hard enough to bruise. Slender-horns yelped and dropped him. Tarfus landed kneeling and exploded upward with a knee to Slender-horns’ groin. He groaned and slumped to the ground. Tarfus turned and discovered a sicklepoint an inch from his throat. He froze.

“Let’s see how much of that sludge we can spill, eh?” said Fang-face.

And then a monster gave a throaty, whirring roar and demanded, “What, may I ask is happening right now?”

Tarfus peered around Fang-face’s head and discovered that what he’d thought was a monster’s roar was in fact a chainsaw’s roar. The chainsaw in question was being wielded by an irate-looking woman with one hooked horn and one straight one. Some shade of greenblood if the insignia on her jacket was any indication. The teeth of the chainsaw in question were whirring dangerously close to Fang-face’s neck. The attacker very carefully dropped his sickle and raised his hands.

The greenblood backed off several feet and Tarfus took the initiative because it seemed Fang-face was too busy focusing on not making any sudden moves or breathing too deeply. Tarfus punched him, knocking him down and out. He then spat on the ground next to Fang-face’s head. “These three jokers decided it was lowblood-culling day or some shit. I was pissed off to begin with, but this night’s just gotten shittier and shittier.” He paused. “Thanks for the save, by the way.” He unsheathed his sickle and approached the fallen trio.

“You’re welcome. But might I inquire as to what you’re doing now?”

Tarfus turned and raised an eyebrow. “What do you think? Culling these wastes of fucking air.”

The greenblood’s eyes widened. “Are you certain that’s wise?”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Are you unaware of the ‘no-culling’ policy? Killing a fellow recruit is grounds for execution. I highly doubt that it would be considered self defense at this point.”

Tarfus snarled. “Well isn’t that just my fucking luck! I’ll settle for second best then, goddammit!” He stalked over to Scar-chin—the apparent leader of the little trio—and kicked him in the ribs a few times. “Hey asshole, get up!”

Scar-chin curled up and opened his eyes blearily. “Whuzzit, ow, fckit. What?”

Tarfus leaned in close to other troll’s face until he was sure he had his attention. “You’re very lucky. You came this close to getting your head handed to you. If not for this considerate lady here, you’d be dead and bleeding right now. So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to walk away. I never see your face outside of training sessions again. I never talk to you again. I never have to deal with hemospectrum bullshit from you again. And just to make sure we’re clear, I’m going to leave you a goddamn parting gift!”

Awareness had been filtering back into Scar-chin’s eyes over the course of Tarfus’ rant, but as Tarfus lifted up the sickle, the other troll’s eyes went wide. Tarfus slammed the sickle point-first into Scar-chin’s shoulder joint, just below the collarbone. He screamed and a splash of light blue colored the sickle’s blade. Tarfus drew back and the sickle remained wedged in the other troll’s body, handle jutting into the air.

Tarfus stalked away from the three fallen bodies without a backwards glance. The greenblood favored them with a brief glance before turning and following. Tarfus made it as far as the corner of a nearby building before slumping against the wall and sinking down. If he’d ached after training, he’d discovered a whole new tier of soreness. He had achieved ache-nirvana.

The greenblood woman joined him against the wall, her chainsaw oddly unaccounted for. Tarfus sucked in a shuddering breath and drew his knees to his chest. He held his hands out in front of himself, and discovered that they were shaking.

“You saved my life. And theirs,” he says without turning. “As cliché as it is, I gotta ask why.”

She remained silent for a moment before answering. “It seemed like the right thing to do,” she said simply.

Tarfus looked up and blinked. “What the fuck? That’s it?”

The girl shrugged. “Death for the sake of death seems like a needless waste to me.”

Tarfus blinked again and looked over at her. “I’m…pretty sure that among everyone I’ve ever met, you’re unique, Miss…?”

She stood up and held out a hand. Tarfus took it she pulled him to his feet. “Auva Madris. Negotiaterror-in-training. And you are?”

Tarfus noticed her attire for the first time—a pleated, heavily-starched skirt and a suit-coat top. Certainly not soldier wear. “Tarfus Depinza, future threshecutioner. I think you’re the first person I’ve said this to in sweeps but, Miss Madris, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She smiled.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second time she meets Tarfus Depinza, he returns the favor.

Auva sat against an outer bulkhead and peered amusedly at Tarfus as he clutched the railing of the rolling deck. She never would’ve expected that the brusque, capable warrior she’d met two sweeps ago to be so prone to seasickness. Admittedly, she was surprised to find that she’d adapted to the up-and-down motion of the ship so easily in comparison.

As Tarfus leaned back and wiped the sweat off his brow, Auva reflected on how he’d grown since she last she’d seen him. It had been shortly after the end of the six-week threshecutioner training program. He’d been tall, wiry, and frighteningly thin when he’d graduated. Now, he was still lean, but in the dangerous whipcord fashion of a coiled slitherbeast waiting to strike. He still wore long sleeves, but Auva suspected his arms had filled out as well. His insistence on sleeves no matter the weather or occasion would’ve been endearing if she didn’t know the reason. He had revealed his blood color to her scarcely two perigrees ago. At first she hadn’t believed it, but the sincerity in his letter and her own memories made for a solid case. That day she’d met him, she’d caught a glimpse of his blood through the hole in his sleeve. She had thought the color odd, but shrugged it off as a trick of the light from the rising sun. His insignia said he was a maroon, and who was she to argue?

But now that she knew the truth, her respect for the irritable threshecutioner had only grown. He’d hidden his blood for two sweeps in the threshecutioners, and when he hadn’t been able to hide, he’d made allies of those who discovered his secret. That, or enemies too terrified of him to speak the truth. Auva also had a sneaking suspicion that a certain retired greenblood threshecutioner had something to do with it, but Auva’d held her tongue on the matter. Not until she had more evidence, and even then where was the harm?

Her train of thought was interrupted by a weary thump as Tarfus sat against the wall beside her and leaned heavily against her shoulder. Auva raised her eyebrows, mildly surprised; she hadn’t taken him for the kind to be so comfortable with physical contact. On the other hand, it might just be his exhaustion talking. They’d been afloat for two nights now, and his seasickness had only begun to abate this evening.

“I’m surprised at you, Tarfus,” she said.

“Uh?”

“Despite our correspondence over the course of the previous two sweeps, you’ve somehow failed to mention that you’ve got the sea legs of a trunkbeast. Imagine, the threshecutioners’ golden boy, the man who bested three others his first night of training, after spending most of it being thrown about by the instructor. I find it surprising.”

Tarfus considered this carefully for a moment before delivering his reply. “Errrgh.”

Auva giggled.

Tarfus groaned again and stirred slightly. “I’ll have you know that boats,” he spat the word, “Do not feature in standard thresh-training. Besides, do you think if I knew, I’d dare write it in a letter, Madris? What if my enemies found it? Imagine the damage to my reputation if they discovered the great Tarfus Depinza hurled like wiggler at the slightest rocking sensation.”

“Yes, I can see how that might be damaging. Catastrophic even. It’s a good thing there’s nobody here to see you. Except me. And the crew. And the members of your squad. And Miss Stratet.”

Tarfus groaned again.

A series of thunks in front of her caused Auva to look up. She came face to shin with a pair of black-clad legs. She looked further up and found Kulath Stratet looking down at her with a twinkle in her eye.

“I see you’ve been teaching Depinza the joys of ship life, negotiaterror. How’s he adapting?”

“Greetings, Miss Stratet. Poorly, I fear. It appears to have driven him beyond the brink of sanity; he seems to have mistaken himself for a maternal flap-beast, and believes the ocean to be his younglings. That’s the only plausible explanation for his repeated vomiting I’ve yet come up with,” Auva said with a completely straight face.

“Really. I always thought Depinza was a bit of a birdbrain,” Stratet responded.

Tarfus stirred, and managed a groan. “Fuck you both.”

“Is that any way to talk to your commander, boy?” Stratet demanded.

“It is when I’m too sick to move and we’re not actually doing anything…sir,” Tarfus grumbled.

Stratet actually chuckled, “I’ll grant you that, this once. At least have the decency to be civil to your moirail!” At Tarfus and Auva’s stricken looks, Stratet burst out laughing. “Oh, sweet Mother Grub, don’t tell me you’re not! Oh dear, I’d forgotten what it was like to be young. I’ll leave you to your romantic entanglements, threshecutioner. The next time I see you, I expect you to be a hundred percent.” She dropped a package of something in Tarfus’ lap. “Here, you ought to be able to keep this down. Eat it or you’ll eat my boot heel.”

“Yes sir.”

Tarfus listened to Stratet clonk away, still chuckling to herself. He turned to Auva. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that old hag was nothing more than a busybody spinster or something. Playing matchmaker with her soldiers, goddamn…and where does she get off calling us moirails? What a brazen fucking accusation! We’re friends and nothing moooooooogh…”

A sudden wave of dizziness swept over Tarfus and he slumped back onto Auva’s shoulder. She rolled her eyes. “Perhaps you should restrain your indignity for when you’re feeling better. There is no need to get so red in the face.”

Panic overtook Tarfus’ features for a moment. “Shit, can you tell?”

Auva sighed. “Relax, Tarfus. It’s completely indistinguishable from maroon in this light.”

“Oh.” Tarfus relaxed.

They remained silent for a time, the swaying of the ship and Tarfus’ feverish body heat lulling Auva into a doze. She viewed the ship through half-lidded eyes, watching the crew adjust the sails and stomp back and forth, hauling on ropes and climbing through rigging, and other things utterly incomprehensible to Auva.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” She murmured eventually.

“Whassat?”

“An entire detachment of threshecutioners to accompany a single newly-graduated negotiaterror. I find it hard to imagine that I warrant this sort of protection. Miss Stratet’s presence is especially confounding. It seems to indicate a mission of some importance. But if that were the case, why wasn’t a steamship commissioned rather than this slower, sail-driven ship?”

“Madris, we exchanged letters for two sweeps after I left basic. Am I right?” Tarfus volunteered, eyes still closed.

“Yes, I am aware. Why?”

Tarfus opened his eyes. “I’m sure I mentioned at some point what a bad idea it was for soldiers to question orders. Especially redbloods. Especially me.”

“Your creative lack of imagination does you credit, Tarfus. But surely you’ve been successful in gleaning more information than your orders have offered. If not, I find it unlikely that Miss Stratet would have placed so much trust in you.”

Tarfus smirked. “Okay, so maybe I’ve got a few ideas that weren’t in the briefing, maybe I heard some gossip on the side.”

Auva waited for a moment. “Well? Do you have any intention of elaborating?”

“Only if you get me water,” Tarfus said, rasping exaggeratedly.

Auva rolled her eyes and stood up, taking Tarfus’ empty canteen. “And you believe me to be the melodramatic one…” Tarfus began coughing as she walked away, and escalated to exaggerated sputtering and wheezing noises as she reached the water barrel and plunged the canteen into it. “Here,” she said, throwing the filled canteen back at him.

Tarfus caught it and poured some water around the cracker crumbs already in his mouth. The package Stratet had given him lay open on his lap, bits of cracker peeking out of the waxed-paper wrapping. After chewing for a moment, he took another swig of water. Then another. He finally swallowed with some difficulty. “I’m pretty sure this is the least appetizing thing I’ve ever eaten. Sawdust is easier to swallow.” He grimaced and took another bite. “If I keep it down, it’s only because it’s glued my chitinous windhole shut, urgh.”

“I believe you were going to share your gossip with me?” Auva prompted, sitting back down.

“Right,” he said, chewing, “Now don’t go spreading this around—as if you would, what the fuck am I saying?—but I’m pretty sure this is going to be Stratet’s last mission before she actually retires. Not the ‘officially retired but still trains and commands the threshecutioners fakey-fake retired bullshit’, but actually hangs up her sickle and goes political.”

“So what is the purpose of this mission? The last report indicated that the battle at our destination was nearly over. I cannot imagine my services will be much in demand by the time we arrive, nor will your own.”

Tarfus shrugged. “No clue there. I’m betting that maybe Stratet suspects the separatists are holding out some sort of reserve and pulled some strings to get herself sent out here. Maybe she thinks it’ll be a fitting last mission or something equally stupid and romantic.”

Auva hmmed and was silent for a moment, thinking. “Who will take up the mantle of command for the Twelfth Legion when she retires?”

“I’ve got the sneaking suspicion it’s going to be me,” he said with a grimace.

“I don’t think I understand the cause for your distress. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Tarfus’ expression relaxed into a frown. “Yeah. On the other hand I’m just now realizing what a pain in the ass all the baby royals are going to be. Not only will I have to actively deal with them, I’ll actually have to go in for officer’s training, and there’s no way there won’t be plenty of pampered purple pricks to deal with.”

Auva chuckled. “Are you predicting that the aristocracy is going to be a royal pain, Tarfus?”

He groaned. “If I weren’t already sick, that would’ve done it. Fuck you for that joke, Madris. Fuck you for me hearing that just now.”

“I find myself inclined to think you need sleep, Tarfus. You’ve been awake for nearly an entire planetary rotation, and you’re beginning to act rather crabby.” Tarfus wisely chose to cram another hunk of cracker into his mouth rather than reply, but his glare said enough. Auva snickered and rose from her perch on the stairs. “The sun will be up in around an hour anyway, and while I happen to enjoy its illumination, I know that you do not. Shall I assist you to your bunk?”

Tarfus levered himself up, using the wall as support. “What are you, crazy? The reason I’m up here in the first place is so those grubfuckers asleep below wouldn’t know how I was getting my bulge handed to me by a little rocking motion. But yeah, sleep sounds amazing. And…” He paused. “Thanks for being here. It—”

Whatever Tarfus planned to say next was drowned out by an explosion and the sound of timbers giving up the battle against a solid ball of lead traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound. The boat rocked in time with the sailors’ cries before the captain’s basso boom rose above the din.

“Pirates off the port side! Grab yer blades and prepare to bisect boarders!” He rumbled.

Auva frowned and grabbed a sailor dashing by. “Doesn’t he mean ‘repel boarders’?”

The sailor leered at her and laughed nastily. “Y’aint never fought pirates, have you? Just repellin’ ‘em ain’t enough.” The sailor shook Auva off and dashed off again.

Auva turned to Tarfus, but found only empty air and a dropped package full of crumbs. She looked toward the stairs leading belowdecks and caught a fleeting glimpse of his retreating back as he tore down the steps. She considered following, but knew she’d just get in the way. He was probably only going to wake the other threshecutioners anyway.

“You’ll be safer down below, negotiaterror,” came a voice inches behind Auva’s shoulder.

She jumped and whirled, her chainsaw already roaring before she had halfway turned.

She came face to forehead with Kulath Stratet and nearly snapped the tendons in her arms as she brought the buzzing blade to a stop inches from the shorter woman’s neck. Stratet hadn’t moved a muscle and merely grinned up at Auva. “Well. A simple ‘no’ would’ve done. Since you seem hell-bent on staying abovedecks, I’d ask if you can fight, but I think the answer to that is pretty damned obvious.”

Stratet glided forward, seemingly unconcerned about the shouting sailors running to and fro, her steps measured and calm, an oasis of serenity in a desert of chaos. Auva followed her in a daze, and soon found herself at the port-side railing of the ship, staring across the water at shadowy shape silhouetted by the grey predawn light against the horizon. It was unmistakably a ship, and was flying a stylized white jolly roger on a black field.

“You needn’t worry about Depinza, girl. I’ve seen him fight and kill on less than an hour of sleep over the course of two nights and not whisper a word of complaint until he was certain the rest of the squad was safe.”

Auva blinked, her mind rapidly reconfiguring to accommodate the sudden non-sequitur. “Do you know,” she said, “That I wasn’t worried? I was…concerned, perhaps. But after knowing him for two sweeps, I am confident in saying that even death itself would have difficulty standing in the way of his stubbornness.” She hesitated for a moment, uncertain. “Are you positive this is the best time to discuss this?”

Stratet’s grin acquired a sardonic edge. “Best time in the world, the minute before a fight. S’when I do my best thinking. In probably less than sixty seconds, all the philosophy in the world won’t matter—a blade doesn’t give a damn if you’re the sorriest red-blood who ever lived or the Empress herself, it’ll pierce you just the same. That sort of thing cuts away a lot of the nonsense, know what I mean?” Stratet leaned back, tossed her sickle up into the air and caught it again. “So while everybody else runs around like a headless cluckbeast, I ensure everything is in order and think. Got anything you’d like to say, negotiaterror?”

Auva stared blankly at Stratet for a moment before shaking her head. “Please do not take offense to this Miss Stratet, but I find that you are a very strange person.”

Stratet threw back her head and laughed as another cannonball sang through the air and crashed into the ship, with a crunch like bones breaking. The ship shuddered in time with Stratet’s laughter. “I like you, Madris. Are you ready to fight, kill, and face death?”

Auva revved her chainsaw. “I would be lying if I said I was prepared to face death, but it appears I do not have a choice.”

Stratet bared her teeth at the other ship. It was not a smile. “Good attitude to have.” She peered more closely at the approaching ship and swore quietly. “Pretty sure I recognize that flag.” She turned. “Captain! Does the name ‘Mindfang’ mean anything to you?”

The captain ceased his bellowing from the helm and turned jerkily to face Stratet. “You don’t mean Marquise Mindfang do you?”

“The very same, Captain. I would advise your men to fire all cannons immediately, whether we are in range or not. It is apparent that she certainly is, even if she hasn’t hit anything vital yet. We are under attack by Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, and she is no laughing matter.”

The captain paled and redoubled his bellowing. The ship’s guns were brought to bear and fired an answering volley toward the approaching ship, now noticeably larger. Auva winced as the cannonballs fell short, splashing harmlessly into the gulf between the ships. The sailors began reloading as a litany of shouted cursing floated up from the stairwell. Tarfus emerged, walking backward and bawling at the threshecutioners making their way up the stairs after him. Some were still tugging on boots, or wiping the sleep from their eyes.

Tarfus broke off from the assembling threshecutioners and joined Auva and Stratet. “Everybody’s accounted for, sir. What’s the situation?”

“Pirates,” Stratet replied. “Ever heard of Spinneret Mindfang?”

“What, the Pirate Marquise? Yeah, some kind of wiggler’s story. Don’t tell me we’re fighting a fairy tale.”

“Very well then, I won’t.” Stratet said.

Tarfus stared blankly for a moment then swore. “Goddammit. Okay, what’re we realistically looking at?”

“Psychic manipulation, complete ruthlessness and a sadistic streak a mile wide,” Stratet said. “Nothing short of lethal force will do.”

Tarfus snorted. “You say that last part every time, sir.”

Stratet smiled briefly. “Grant an old soldier her idiosyncrasies, Depinza. Now look alive, they’ve got the sun in our eyes and the element of surprise.”

At Stratet’s warning, four puffs of smoke rose from the deck of the other ship, followed shortly by four pops and a high-pitched buzzing sound. Four metal harpoons trailing cables crashed into the timbers of the ship and stuck fast. The cables on the ends of the harpoons pulled taut, and the assembled trolls on the ship stumbled as ship jerked under their feet.

“They’re pulling us in,” Auva noted with horror.

“Cut the cables, you slack-jawed daffodils!” Bellowed the captain. The crew leaped into action, attacking the cables with swords, hatchets and whatever was at hand.

“It’s no use cap’n! Steel cables!”

“Then cut the wood around it, you idiots!” Tarfus shouted. This led to a renewed frenzy of cutting, hacking and sawing.

It was no use. Their ship was no more than thirty yards from the pirates’ and closing fast. In moments, the two ships collided with a bone-jarring crash, knocking everybody unwise enough to be standing to their knees. Auva noted that the pirates’ ship had been protected by thick rubber bumpers at regular intervals along its edge. Clever.

And then there was no more time to think, because a snarling pirate had swung into view in front of her and was swinging a cutlass at her neck. Auva’s face registered shock for a split second before a sickle leapt in front of the pirate’s blade and sent it spinning out of his fingers with a deft twist. Tarfus stepped in front of her and shoved her backward with one hand, impaling the pirate in the same motion.

“Wake up, Madris! Fight or die!” Tarfus shouted.

Auva shook her head and steeled herself. She surveyed the area and saw threshecutioners gathered in clusters of four, back to back, fighting as a single unit and trading blows with up to twice again as many pirates. Auva spied a group of threshecutioners just as one of their member fell to a pirate’s cutlass. The gathered pirate crowd spotted their opportunity and moved in for the kill. The three remaining threshecutioners gave ground until their backs were against the railing.

Auva sprinted across the ship, and revved her chainsaw as she went. One of the assembled pirates began to turn just as she swung her chainsaw fast and low. The unlucky pirate screamed as he was cut off at the knees and yellow blood splattered across Auva’s clothing. The other pirates turned at the noise, granting the cornered threshecutioners the reprieve they needed. They hacked into the distracted pirates and finished off the remaining members, or sent them running to regroup.

Auva turned, and relaxed fractionally as she discovered there were no attackers about to behead her.

“Hey, what’re you doiAAUG—” Came an abrupt cry from behind her.

She whirled around again and found one of the threshecutioners staring blankly at a fallen one of their number, the fallen one’s blood coating his sickle. The remaining threshecutioner stared at the other in horror and barely managed to dodge the sickle slash in time.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” The remaining threshecutioner demanded.

‘Psychic manipulation, complete ruthlessness and a sadistic streak a mile wide,’ Auva remembered. Thinking quickly, she cut the power to her chainsaw and slammed the flat of the weapon into the possessed troll’s temple. He crumpled into a heap on the ground.

“It’s Mindfang!” Auva cried, “She is controlling our soldiers! Beware!” She turned to the remaining threshecutioner. “Can you get the wounded to safety?”

He glanced at the three fallen—two still, the other unconscious, but alive. “Yeah. Go on.”

Auva made her way back to Tarfus and Stratet’s side as they finished off another attacker with contemptuous ease.

“Forgive my intrusion,” Auva said, “But I believe we need to stop Mindfang herself unless we want her to pick us off one by one by using our allies against us.”

Stratet nodded. “Agreed. Depinza, get two of the men and follow me.” Tarfus nodded and strode away. “Madris, you stay here. Vaten, Rollis, Frieze, Kahrre, guard the negotiaterror. Keep an eye out for possession by Mindfang, she can only control one of you at a time,” Stratet rattled off. “Depinza, you ready?”

“And waiting, sir,” Tarfus replied, two others lined up behind him.

“Then let’s move!” She said, and jumped across the gap dividing the two ships. The other three followed close behind.

“This way miss,” Said one of the threshecutioners, touching her lightly on the arm. She followed him, and they joined the regrouped threshecutioner detachment, arranged in a defensive line with the sailors while the pirates gathered on the opposite side of the deck.

Then the pirates attacked, and the next several minutes passed in a blur of hemorrhaging rainbow, pained screaming, and the persistent roar of Auva’s chainsaw. She lost herself in the rhythm of the clash of blades and cries of the fallen. For every drop of jade-green spilled, she and her allies ensured that their enemies suffered retribution twofold.

And then there was a sour note in the melody. The pirates retreated, melted into a disorganized mob for a moment, and reformed around a sight that made Auva’s insides clench in dismay. And then there was cold steel at her neck, and she froze. The threshecutioners’ attention had lapsed, and now one of their own was holding his sickle against Auva’s neck.

Through the gap in the pirates, a tall woman in a long black overcoat trimmed in blue stood on the deck of the pirates’ ship. She was wearing a large, floppy black hat with a single white feather stuck through the brim, high-heeled boots, and elbow-length black gloves. In one hand, she held her saber to Stratet’s neck, and in her other, she held a faintly glowing blue die. Her expression was one of supreme confidence; a satisfied predator’s smile outlined in blue lipstick, two prominent fangs poking out over her bottom lip. Her hair was an artfully arranged mass of black curls. Auva wondered how she kept it that way during all the fighting, and what her eyes looked like under that—what was she thinking? She shook her head and returned to reality.

Tarfus was standing to the woman’s side, unrestrained but unable to act for the blade at Stratet’s throat. The fangs-bared grimace on Tarfus’ face stood testament to his frustration and Auva swore quietly. When he was angry, he was liable to do something stupid…

Before Auva was able to worry further, the woman spoke with a voice like cold razors. “For those of you who are unaware, I am Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. I am here today to take from you your valuables and, should I find you useful, your freedom. Should I not, I will take from you your lives. If any of you would like to prove your w—” She began.

“Oh please, Spin,” Stratet interrupted, “Spare them the monologue, would you? You’re just going to kill them all anyway and we both know it.”

Mindfang’s grin widened. “Dear Kula, you always were quite the firecracker. You’re quite certain you don’t want to come with me again?”

Stratet rolled her eyes. “You might be surprised by this Spin, but no, I don’t want to be kidnapped by you again. While it was a memorably hate-filled night, you’re still a little young for my tastes.”

Mindfang sighed, and ran a finger over Stratet’s broken horn. Stratet shuddered. “Oh, but we had so much fun that night. It’s just as well I suppose; I’ve found another kismesis, one more befitting someone of my blood.”

“See, that’s why it would never work between us, Spin. You hate too readily, and nobody’s willing to auspisticize for you. I know you must be spadebroken over it, but you’ll just have to find a way to cope.”

Auva listened to the conversation, wide-eyed. Stratet knew Mindfang personally? And Stratet had…ahem…”known” Mindfang? She was so shocked she nearly missed it when Stratet took advantage of Mindfang’s distraction to flash a hand signal to Tarfus. Tarfus moved faster than Auva’s eyes could track, and his sickle scythed through the air toward her. Auva’s eyes widened and she jerked to the side, her captor’s weapon nicking her neck in the process. Her captor took the spinning sickle’s handle to the face and stumbled back, Mindfang’s control momentarily broken.

Mindfang screeched and clutched her forehead with her free hand, as the sensation of the sickle’s collision fed back into her own mind. Stratet attempted to twist out of Mindfang’s grip, but Mindfang brought her saber to Stratet’s neck and

 _sliced_

and there was a spray of green. That single, frozen moment stretched as the viridian arced through the air in slow motion and Stratet fell to her knees. It stretched like a sheet of rubber until it finally snapped, and Auva found herself swinging her chainsaw toward the troll holding her captive. The flat of the weapon caught him in the head and he went down. Auva managed a single step toward the other ship before there were suddenly bodies in her way again.

The next few moments were utter chaos, all swinging limbs and the press of bodies on all sides, roaring like a single, enraged animal. All the threshecutioners had leapt into action simultaneously and torn into the remaining pirates. One unlucky individual made the mistake of attacking Auva and received a ravening chainsaw to the midsection for his trouble. With no one blocking her, she again had a clear view of the other ship’s deck.

Tarfus had acquired a sickle from somewhere, and was swinging wildly at Mindfang, who was finding herself hard-pressed to defend against the furious threshecutioner. And then both of them stumbled to their knees as the deck quaked and rumbled. Auva looked down and saw gunsmoke rising from the gap between the ships. Apparently, some enterprising sailor had made it belowdecks and had the bright idea of cannoning Mindfang’s ship from point-blank range.

Mindfang realized what had happened as well. She must not have thought much of her ship’s odds, because the next thing out of her mouth was a screeched “Retreat!”

Tarfus took advantage of Mindfang’s momentary lapse in concentration by delivering a slash to her upper torso. She grunted and twisted, and launched a boot to Tarfus’ chest. He caught it full on and flew backward, landing next to Stratet’s motionless form. He glanced at it, glanced back at Mindfang and made a split-second decision. He stuck his sickle through his belt, scooped up Stratet’s motionless form and made a mad dash toward the other ship.

Mindfang looked up at Tarfus as he was picking up Stratet and a grin spread across her face. She drew the hand holding the die back, and cast it forward with an executioner’s grace. Seven other dice followed the first and tumbled to the deck. For a moment, nothing happened, and Auva let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Then, a blue lightning bolt tore out of the gray sky and crashed into the deck right on top of Tarfus. The blast threw him forward, clear across the gap between the two ships. He tumbled through the air, and landed on the far side of the other ship’s deck, Stratet still in his grip.

The moment the call to retreat had come, the pirates still capable of movement had turned tail and fled for the relative safety of Mindfang’s ship. Those incapable had been left behind to die at the merciless sickles of the threshecutioners. Auva hurried down to Tarfus and Stratet, dreading what she would find.

Tarfus lay on his front, unmoving, but the steady rise and fall of his back indicated that he was at least breathing. A long line of burnt flesh stretched from between his shoulder blades to the base of his back. The flesh was blackened at the edges of the wound and bright crimson red in the middle where the skin had been burnt open. It was still smoking. As Auva watched, Tarfus stirred and made his way to his knees. He turned to look at her, and caught sight of Stratet’s immobile form.

Tarfus turned to Auva, the question in his eyes. She shook her head sadly, and Tarfus clenched his eyes shut. He swayed and nearly fell over as the ship rocked violently as Mindfang’s pirates released the tow ropes from the harpoons and unmoored themselves from the other ship. Tarfus paled and managed to stick his head between two posts of the railing before the cracker from earlier came up again in the other direction.

“Fuck the sea,” he croaked, and didn’t move.

Auva dragged him away from the edge, and held him all the way to shore in full view of the recovering threshecutioners on deck.

He didn’t complain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was monstrous. At the time of its posting, it comprises a third of the story's length. I very nearly split it in half, but I wanted to have the flashback bits done and over with. Hope you guys enjoy it.
> 
> Also, I'd like to take a moment to give a shout-out to [Re: Champion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/175267), another fantastic Karkat ancestor fic-in-progress that you should all totally read.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present-day awakening.

Of the emotions warring for dominance in Tarfus’ mind, confusion was the victor of the moment. It narrowly beat out relief and frustration as he sat and wondered.

He had woken up to a sloppily bandaged left wrist, and a modestly-sized recuperacoon. When he’d poked his head out of the slime, the pink moon was just rising. Just past evening for this time of perigree then. Most shocking, he was still alive, and apparently not in a holding cell. It had been a full five minutes before his heat-blistered skin, tortured muscles, and wire-tense ligaments had loosened enough to allow him to pull himself out of his recuperacoon. With the aid of the sopor slime’s pain-deadening effects, he had crawled his way over to the foot of the window. Disregarding the trail of slime he left in his wake, he climbed into a chair thoughtfully placed under the window. The view revealed a vast expanse of waves crashing against the base of the compound far below.

He’d stared at the distant water below for several long minutes. The turbulent waves served as an accurate, albeit inverted mirror of his mood. At the moment, he was feeling oddly at peace. He was alive. If the lock on the inside of the door was any indicator, he wasn’t imprisoned in this block. True, his co-conspirators were dead. True, he was presumably still in the clutches of his sworn enemy. True, he had been betrayed by his closest…friend.

That last thought had made him wince. Maybe he wasn’t quite as serene as he’d thought.

Either way, he was able to enjoy a moment of silence and solitude. For the first time in perhaps sweeps, his immediate future wasn’t clouded with the twin specters of fear and threat of death. He had faced the worst and while he hadn’t exactly won, losing brought its own brand of relief. The awful tension and uncertainty was gone. All that remained now was coming to terms with this strange new reality.

Then he’d seen the letter.

It had been sitting in an envelope on an end table artfully placed next to the chair. There were no markings, save for the Empress’ personal seal keeping it sealed. He’d slit the envelope open and pulled the letter out. It was written on plain paper, in serviceable black ink, the handwriting neat and precise.

 _Threshecutioner,_

 _If you are reading this, you are both awake and alive. Good. I have need of you._

 _There are things you must know. First, your old name is dead, along with your old life. Speak not of them where others may hear. Second, there are those who would rather you dead; it would be tidier for them. Beware those who seek to gain your trust. Third, you must know that your presence here is a wild card—you are closer to your goal now than ever before. Use that opportunity wisely._

And then, in place of a signature, simply:  
 _  
I am not what you think I am._

And then the letter had quietly and suddenly been enveloped in flame. Tarfus dropped the burning paper and shook soot from his hand. There was no trace the letter had ever existed, save for a small pile of ash and scorch marks on the table where the envelope had once rested.

Now Tarfus stared forlornly out the window. Even when he’d been killed and erased, he was still a pawn in her game. The Empress had sunk her claws firmly into him and, it appeared, had no intention of releasing him. What the hell did she mean, “You are closer to your goal now than ever before”? Surely she knew her death was his goal—why would she encourage that? Unless it was all a trap, to see if he would move against her, even in the circumstances. A trick to goad him into some final humiliation.

He’d be damned if he would give her the pleasure. A brief spark of rage flashed along his spine before being drowned by despair. What could he do under the Empress’ thumb, alone, with enemies on all sides? In the past, he’d relied upon finding allies sympathetic to his cause. He doubted his odds here, surrounded by the Empress’ personal staff, nobles and sycophants.

Frustrated, Tarfus stood up with a groan. Only half of his bones popped this time, but now that the sopor slime had mostly dripped away, he felt like a heater was being held against his entire front half. Wincing, he remembered his burns and made a note to see if he could get his hands on some kind of salve. Leaving the room suddenly seemed like a very good idea. That letter had unsettled him, and being unsettled begat anger. Activity calmed him down, if only marginally. He gave the room a second, cursory inspection to see if there were any clean clothes to be had. To his surprise, there were. A simple black silk robe along with a clean towel had been carefully folded and placed on a small stool near the door. Interestingly, the ensemble was completely devoid of any symbol, red or otherwise. It was considered poor etiquette at the least to offer a guest clothing without their symbol or at least color, even if it was nothing more than a wristband. Going out in public without your symbol was considered either very arrogant, or very stupid. Being discovered by authorities without wearing one was grounds for immediate culling, as was wearing a false symbol. The Empress’ decision to exclude one from his outfit was worrying. Tarfus felt like she was trying to tell him something.

He angrily stripped off his slime-damp clothing, toweled off and shrugged on the robe. The Empress was playing a game with him and he hated being anybody’s plaything. He straightened the robe and tied it shut with a sash around his waist before ripping the door open with a snarl. He was going to get some answers, dammit. He stormed into the hallway beyond without regard for what might be on the other side and turned to the first person he saw. He grabbed them by the shirt and yanked them close.

“Tell me where I can find some medical supplies and some clothes that don’t make me look like some prissy prophet, or I’ll tear your airsacs out,” he said by way of greeting, then took a look the unfortunate troll he’d cornered.

She was wearing a stiffly-starched navy-blue suit coat top with maroon highlights and a burgundy skirt. Two horns curled out of long, unruly black hair, and maroon lipstick covered her lips. Her surprised expression quickly morphed into annoyance, and she held a hand toward Tarfus, palm out. Tarfus felt an unseen force lift him up by the shoulders and leave him suspended in midair. The woman stepped back, freeing her shirt from Tarfus’ grasp and crossed her arms.

“Really now, is a little bit of courtesy so much to ask for?” She asked calmly.

Oh shit, she was a psychic. Tarfus hated psychics. Always so smug and superior and self-assurred. Always parading around their superior _holy shit wait a minute was she a maroon-blood?_ Tarfus spotted her symbol’s coloring and immediately reevaluated his opinion of her. Simmering dislike rather than hate was in order, perhaps.

“Okay, I can admit that threatening to tear your airsacs out might have been a little premature. All I want is some fucking directions. Is that so hard?” Tarfus said.

The maroonblood let him go, and he fell to the floor with an undignified squwak. “That’s a _little_ better, I suppose,” she said. “How about this—I’ll take you where you want to go on one condition.”

Tarfus narrowed his eyes. “That being what?”

“I have to move some things. You’re going to carry them for me,” she said, a smile blooming on her face.

“And if I say that’s a fucking stupid idea?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “Well, I suppose you can find things on your own. Good luck navigating the compound without an escort, or even a symbol. Guards see you alone, and you’re lightly-charred grubloaf.”

Tarfus snarled. “Fine, if that’s what it takes to not get perforated by some moron wannabe rent-a-soldier with a goddamn spear.” He gestured for the other troll to lead the way and she smugly obliged.

The pair spent much of the journey in silence, Tarfus glaring at any passerby that stared too hard. And anybody who looked annoying. And some others, just for good measure; it never hurt to maintain an image, after all.

“What, may I ask, is a red-blood,” She said, eyeing his healed wounds, “Doing in the guest’s chambers anyway? Much less with no sense of direction?” The woman asked, an expression of vague interest on her features.

Tarfus continued glaring at a guard until he was no longer in line of sight before turning to her and responding. “It’s a moronic saga of incompetence and bewilderment,” he responded truthfully. “If I figure it out before my grisly death, maybe I’ll find it in me to give enough of a shit to let you know.”

The woman smiled. “Oh, good!”

Tarfus’ head swung around to regard her with bafflement. “Good? How the fuck is my probably-impending death good?”

She rolled her eyes. “Because it means you have an excuse for being an insufferable asshole.”

“Hey, fuck you. I’ll have you know that compared to what any other sane man would be like right now, I’m like starshine and roses. I am friend to tiny purrbeasts everywhere right now, I am Pupa fucking Pan, okay? No one is in a friendlier mood than me right now.”

“That’s funny, I don’t recall Pupa Pan glaring at everybody he ever met and threatening them with bodily harm.”

“Well then I guess you got the sanitized version of the story, redlips.”

The woman turned an disbelieving stare toward Tarfus. “Redlips? That’s the best you can come up with?”

Tarfus turned away and looked down. “Fuck off, it’s been a long couple of nights.”

She turned away, barely hiding a smile. “ _Clear_ ly.” She turned into a room indistinguishable from the rest. “In here.”

Tarfus followed her into a dusty room full of dusty filing cabinets and shelves full of thin huskboard boxes, papers and binders. Shelves and cabinets stretched into the dusty gloom in the distance. Tarfus propped himself up against the doorframe while the woman rooted through several of the boxes near the entrance, muttering to herself.

Tarfus endured this for a moment for before speaking up. “I guess Redlips is a pretty fucking stupid name. What should I call you instead?”

“My name is Lucida. That’ll do,” she said, hefting a large box full into her arms. She shifted it to one arm, and pointed at two more boxes with her free hand. “Get those two and the directions are all yours, Scowls.”

Tarfus glared, and reached down to lift the boxes. “Scowls? I thought I was terrible with nicknames, but that takes the metaphorical idiot cake.” He stacked the two boxes atop each other and staggered as he lifted both into his arms. “What the hell are you making me carry, woman? Rectangular building things?!”

Lucida snickered. “Worse, papers. I’m the Royal Historian, and the Empress has me digging through the archives for references to some old legend. What you’ve got in your arms is the result of three weeks of painstaking research.”

Tarfus followed her out the door, shifting the boxes to one side so he could see. “Holy shit, you wasted all this time on some stupid legend?”

“When the Empress asks, it’s not exactly possible to deny her. And besides, I think it’s interesting. Our civilization has a fascinating history, but so many insist on blindly ignoring it. I think investigating the past with the present’s insight can shed light on any number of mysteries,” said Lucida.

Tarfus grunted. “Fascinating and heavy. Why aren’t you using your fancy psychic powers to just magic these around, anyway?”

“Because it takes about as much energy as physically lifting them. Besides, exercise is healthy for you.”

Tarfus grunted. “How much further?”

Lucida rolled her eyes. “Just around the corner, you soulless lout.”

She led him around a corner and unlocked a door at the end of a short hall and shouldered it open. Tarfus followed blindly, the boxes obscuring his view. Because of this, he didn’t see the door’s raised threshold, and rammed his toe into it. He stumbled into the room, landing heavily on one knee, and bashed his arm against the corner of a desk.

“Fuck,” he muttered, “Isn’t tonight just incredible already.” He had somehow maintained his hold on the boxes, and set them aside before using them to lever himself back upward. “Great, and this worthless pile of shit robe is already torn. I cannot believe anybody actually wears these things, it’s like wearing paper. I bet I couldn’t even cull some insubordinate bulgelicker without tearing out a seam.”

Tarfus took a step away from the desk before stumbling, suddenly woozy. His head spun and he sank back to his knees, and all his aches and pains from earlier were suddenly clamoring for attention in his thinkpan all at once. No wonder he’d felt so chipper these past few minutes, the sopor slime’s residual effects had been numbing it all. _Rookie mistake, Depinza, and now you’re gonna pay for it..._

“You had better not bleed on my papers,” Lucida said, frowning down at him.

“What?” Tarfus mumbled. Then what Lucida had said sunk it. “Oh fuck me,” he hissed, and slapped his hand down over the torn sleeve. He looked up to see if Lucida had noticed, but she was just staring disdainfully.

“You’re a maroon. So?” She arched an eyebrow.

“Force of habit,”he said, thinking quickly. “Spend as long as I have in a threshecutioner outfit, and you don’t want to go around reminding anybody how red you are.” _Good, she hadn’t gotten a good look, just had to keep it that way..._. Tarfus stood up. “Anyway, you’ve gotten some packbeast service out of me. Now where the hell can I find some damn supplies already?”

“And rob myself of more creative opportunities to abuse you?” At Tarfus’ glare, she chuckled. “Fine. You can probably find a spare guard’s uniform if you go downstairs, that’s where all the cleaning is done. As for medical supplies, you’re in luck.” Lucida tossed a purple box with a green cross on the front at him. “I’m also an arcaheologist; ancient ruins aren’t the safest place in the world. This thing has saved my life at least once. It should be good enough to get the job done on you.”

Tarfus fumbled to catch the box, surprised. He slapped it into the air with his right hand. He leapt up, and caught it with his left, arm fully extended. His sleeve fell down to his wrist, exposing it as a spasm of pain ran through it. He had reacted without thinking—his left was the wrist that had been perforated by the Empress earlier. He drew his wrist back to his body and clutched it against his chest, swearing. The medical kit fell to the ground, forgotten.

And suddenly Lucida was there, grabbing his wrist. She looked at the bandages covering his wound, still greenish and damp in parts from being soaked in the sopor slime. And right in the center of the bandage, a tiny circle of damning crimson. She looked sharply up at Tarfus.

“I knew something was fishy about you,” she breathed. “What’s your story, Scowls?”

Tarfus grit his teeth unconsciously. He was in no position to kill Lucida bare-handed and injured. He’d be lucky if he could so much as knock her unconscious, especially with her psychic power backing her up. He had nothing with which to bribe her into disinterest. He had no choice but to fall back upon his weapon of last resort—his words.

“Would you believe I’m so high on the hemospecturm, I’m the only one with this color?” He growled.

Lucida snorted. “Not a chance. The only one with that dubious honor is Her Condescension, and you don’t look like an Empress. But I find you stumbling and looking like reheated death in her compound, bursting out of one of her guest chambers. You have no idea where you are, so you grab the first person you find and try to throttle answers out of them. You’re used to being obeyed, even if it’s reluctantly. So I ask again—who are you?”

Tarfus grimaced and decided to go for broke. He was already living on borrowed time. What was one more withdrawl? “Fine. Officially, I’m a dead man. I tried to kill the Empress, but, fucking shock, turns out that’s a lot harder than you’d think. The shithive broad decided to spare me for some reason, and now here I am, as clueless as you are. In fact, you might have a better idea than me—sounds like you have to deal with her bullshit on a semi-regular basis. So, miss historian, here’s the ultimate riddle: why did the mighty Empress spare a mutant-blooded revolutionary?”

Lucida stared at him, agape. “That’s got to be the single most outrageous story I’ve ever heard.”

Tarfus returned her stare with a glare. “Blood doesn’t lie. You ever seen a maroon this bright? No, you haven’t. Because I’m not a fucking maroon. I’m so low, I’ve fallen off the ass-end of the spectrum. You want proof of the rest, go ask your precious Empress yourself. She’ll probably answer in questions and riddles. Hell, she may deny my very existence. I am quite literally past caring.”

Tarfus snatched his wrist back from Lucida’s unresisting hand, and clenched his other fist to prevent the spasm of pain from showing in his face. He took the medical kit from where it had fallen, turned, and left the room without another word. Lucida stared after him, speechless.

He hadn’t been entirely truthful—he had some notion of what the Empress wanted with him. He simply had no intention of spreading it around. He wasn’t sure he even liked to think about it himself.

So he didn’t. He had clothes to find.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gossip, mathematicians, and unsolicited romantic advice.

Tarfus swore as he pulled the trailing end of the fresh bandages taut with his teeth. The bloody, slime-damp bandages previously covering his wrist lay coiled at his feet like a venemous slitherbeast in wait. Innocuous and harmless looking, until one realized what the markings meant. How did the old rhyme go? “Green, white and red, it'll dissolve your head”? Something like that, anyway. His bandages wouldn't be dissolving any heads, but it'd certainly put his on a culling fork if anybody realized what they meant. Once the blood dried, it'd be easily mistakable for maroon, or even a lighter brown but while it was still fresh, he had to be careful.

He swore again and tied the bandages off. He was no stranger to tending to his own wounds, but he hated doing it one-armed. It was just undignified-looking. It _did_ teach one some creative uses for teeth and feet though.

Tarfus stood up, and slipped a loop of gauze around his neck and rested his arm in it. Fresh bandages, check. Makeshift sling, check. Old bandages shoved in sleeve of robe, check. He pushed the sleeve of his robe down over the left arm, concealing his bandaged wrist from view. The bandages should hide anything even if the wound started bleeding again, but it never hurt to be cautious. With any luck, he'd be wearing something more suitable soon anyway. He poked his head out of the storage room he'd been hiding in, and darted out once he was sure the way was clear.

By his reckoning, it was probably around midnight by now, which would simultaneously make his job easier and harder. The increased traffic in the compound would make it harder to get noticed. On the other hand, if he drew attention to himself, it was virtually guaranteed that there'd be witnesses. Which just meant he'd have to avoid drawing attention to himself. It would require, in a word, subtlety.

Damn. He'd never been any good at that.

He merged smoothly from the side hallway into a main hall and joined a crowd of people going both directions. He drew curious stares, but none curious enough to stop him. They all had somewhere to be, after all. If a burnt, injured vagrant in a ripped silk robe happened to be in the hallway, it was none of their business. One of the guards would deal with it, certainly.

One passerby looked him up and down and chuckled. “Kismesis get the best of ya?”

Or that. Sure. “Yeah. Woke up blindfolded, gagged and in this ridiculous getup. Fuckin’ blackrom, am I right?” Tarfus said, shrugging.

The other man grinned. “Can’t live with it, get culled without it. Day in the life, eh?” And he moved ahead, disappearing into the crowd.

Tarfus raised an eyebrow at the other troll as he disappeared into the crowd. He had been unusually...chummy. He remembered the Empress’ words: _Beware those who seek to gain your trust_. While he doubted that anybody he met could peg him for who he really was, it certainly wouldn’t be outrageous to assume others would be looking for people that stood out. And he certainly stood out at the moment. He would have to keep an eye on that troll if he saw him around again.

He broke off from the crowd and ducked into an inconspicuous doorway before opening the door and slipping inside. His hunch had been on the money; a service stairway—half as large as the more magnificent stairwells in the rest of the compound, and used by twice as many people. Lowblood cleaning staff needed to get around, but they did it unseen in unpainted, windowless shafts. Tarfus was more familiar with these sorts of stairwells than he cared to admit—he’d used them often enough in campaigns that had degenerated into urban warfare. They were easy to hide in, and often allowed unfettered access to most of a building. They were also completely unlit save for whatever cracks of light seeped in through the doorways. He consciously forced himself to take deep, even breaths; he wasn’t fighting for his life in a crumbling city, and not every shadow hid someone waiting to kill him. He made it down a level and opened the door a crack. No one in sight. He opened the door all the way and barreled straight into another troll. He hissed in pain as his wrist was jostled. Yep. Sopor slime had completely worn off.

“Watch it, grubsucker!” The other troll, said. His heavy lisp made it sound more like ‘Watch it, grubthucker!’

Tarfus boggled vacantly at the lisping troll for a moment. He was wearing glasses with colored lenses, one red, the other blue. He had two pairs of horns. And he was wearing the ugliest lab coat Tarfus had ever seen; a truly horrendous mustard-yellow, with red highlights on one side, and blue on the other. _Seems to be milking that duality gimmick for all it’s worth_ , Tarfus thought before regaining his composure and donning his usual scowl. “That’s what happens when you stand outside a door, idiot! Move it!”

Tarfus shrugged past the other troll, ignoring the glare he received in the process, only to stop dead as he smacked into a translucent wall made of—Tarfus groaned—red and blue energy. He turned around to find the lisping troll advancing on him, his eyes glowing blue and red respectively. _Mother Grub save me from psychics, goddammit._

“Do you have any idea who I am?” the psychic said, poking Tarfus in the chest.

Tarfus hid a wince by grinding his teeth. His front was still tender from bruising. “Some asshole with a lisp and hideous outfit blocking my way. So fucking what?”

The light from the psychic’s eyes flared, and his glare intensified. “I am Almesian Lybnis, Royal Mathematician, and you will show me your respect!”

Tarfus expression morphed into disbelief. “Okay, ‘Almethian’. I’ll show you some ‘rethpect’ the moment you stop skulking around servant’s passages being a Royal Pain-in-the-ass. Now let me through or I’m going to throttle you with your own ugly outfit.”

And just like that, Almesian deflated. The psychic glow disappeared from his eyes, and he slumped down. “You really think it’s ugly?”

Tarfus disbelieving expression, if anything, grew more pronounced. “Wow. Yes. It’s hideous. And now I’m leaving. Goodbye.” Tarfus turned on his heel and walked away. _Reason forty-eight to murder the Empress. Her staff is composed entirely of idiots and lunatics. God._

Tarfus kept walking and hoped his debatably good luck held. “Almethian”’s mood seemed mercurial at best; he didn’t want to be around when his mood swung back toward murderous. If anybody needed a moirail, it was that guy.

He rounded a corner and caught a whiff of the unmistakable scent of a laundry-room—lye, disinfectant, old blood, but mostly just hot, damp air. He veered left at the next intersection, so far having encountered thankfully few passers-by. He was a little surprised at how easily he’d been able to find his way around. It all came down to highblood arrogance in the end, he supposed. They were all so secure in the knowledge that their enemies would respect them enough to at least kill them publicly and obviously, that they never bothered to alter the layout of their structures. This compound fell into that classification, and as a result, obeyed a few idiosyncrasies Tarfus had been using to get around. First, the servants’ passages he’d already used. Second, the better accommodations were found closer to sea level, or underwater. The few stories it extended above ground level would be reserved for highblooded land-dwellers who would view an underwater room as an insult. The end result was that the servants’ quarters, kitchens and laundry rooms were all nearest to ground-level, with the private chambers and offices above and below respectively. The further from the base classes dwelling in the dirt, the better, right?

The respiteblock Tarfus had awoken in had been on the ninth story, if one counted the level the Empress resided on as the first floor.. He was sure that was deliberate. He filed the thought away for later; more pressing issues were at hand.

He came to a set of swinging double doors and pushed his way inside. He was greeted with a billowing cloud of steam, and the sight of a number of trolls bustling back and forth. As far as he could tell, none was higher than a yellowish greenblood. Some carried sopping bundles of laundry; others were folding clothing on tables at the far end. Still others stirred gooey mounds of laundry soaking in a chemical concoction held in the back of a large, purple insectoid creature. Specially bred for the purpose, the creatures naturally generated an acidic slime and secreted it into a natural chitinous bowl on their back. The secretion bound to and dissolved dirt, but left textiles alone. Tarfus was fuzzy on the details, but knew enough that troll skin was considered “dirt” and for that reason the people wielding the stirring sticks wore thick gloves and long aprons. He’d seen what purging slime burns did, and had a healthy respect for the stuff.

Tarfus approached the folding station and tapped one of the trolls on the shoulder. He turned and stared at Tarfus for a moment. “What?”

“Got a request from an Almesian Lybnis. Said he wanted ‘thomething a little more thubdued’. Got anything that fits the bill?” Tarfus said.

The other man laughed. “Ha! Jumped-up yellow bastard finally figured out what an eyesore that goddamn coat is, huh? Here, help me finish these and just take whatever you need,” he said, gesturing at the unfolded laundry.

Tarfus grunted. “Can do. May not be as much help as you’re expecting,” he said, nodding toward his lame hand. “Kismesis got a hold of me this evening, left me with a couple of parting gifts.”

“That the reason for the getup? Looks comfortable, at least,” said the other man, deftly folding a black uniform.

“Yeah, and totally fucking useless for anything,” Tarfus said, grabbing a garment, and folding it as well as one hand and his chest allowed.

The other man eyed Tarfus and grunted. “Hm. F’you were looking for some new clothes, I’d say that you look like a medium to me. Maybe a large. Just my opinion, ‘course.” His eyes flicked to the growing pile of folded clothing.

Tarfus nodded at the other man and grunted. “Thanks.”

They continued in silence until several towers of folded uniforms lay in front of them. The other man took a bundle off the top pile and handed it to Tarfus. “For Almesian Lybnis, eh? Between you an’ me, I don’t see what the Empress sees in ‘im. Guy’s a total toolbox.”

Tarfus stopped, half-turned. “The Empress?”

“Yeah, you hadn’t heard? Rumor has it she’s got a thing for the bipolar freak. Can’t imagine the Historian’s too pleased about that.”

“Historian? What, Lucida something-or-other?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. She’s been holding a torch for Lybnis for the longest time, and he’s too oblivious to see it. Dumb bastard.”

Tarfus forced a laugh. “Yeah, he ain’t the brightest lampfly. I’d better get back before he blows up or something,” he said, grabbing a second uniform and turning away again.

“Hey,” said the other man. Tarfus turned around again. “You need an auspistice for that kismesis of yours, lemme know. I’ve got a friend who’s got a talent for it.”

Tarfus paused, suddenly uncomfortable. “Uh, yeah. I think I’ll be okay, but thanks anyway.” He nodded at the other man one last time and strode away before he could receive any more unsolicited romantic assistance.

He grabbed a pair of maroon Cancer patches from a bin on his way out and allowed himself a tiny grin. He’d forgotten just how much gossip flew back and forth between cleaning staff. He’d expected to find something to wear, and ended up with a lead into just what the hell was going on in addition. So now he had some reasonable clothing, a name, and a place to start.

Step one: change into some real clothes.

Step two: find Almesian Lybnis again and grill that fucker for all he was worth.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery and planning for the future.

Tarfus finished sewing the Cancer patch onto the breast pocket of the second uniform, and held it up to appraise his work. A little crooked, but with a gimp hand and his tailoring skills as rusty as they were, it’d suffice. Unfortunately, now that that was out of the way, there was nothing to distract him from the need to patch himself up further. After retrieving the two uniforms from the laundry, he’d returned to the closet where he’d first bandaged his wrist and retrieved the medical kit. Now it was sitting on the table near the window, taunting him. He had no problem with blood, burns, broken bones, or bruises. On other people. But when it came to docterroring his own body, he was never able to shake a subtle sense of unease. It wasn’t a matter of disgust—he had left that milestone of self-loathing behind long ago. It was a matter of simple, practical paranoia.

He stood and crossed to the door for the third time and checked the lock again. Still locked. Still no sign of any enforcement officers come to batter it down and cull him with extreme prejudice. He sat back down and sighed. He hated how exposed tending to his own injuries made him feel, but it had to be done. In the threshecutioners, he’d usually been among those he trusted, or been able to find privacy. He didn’t know the territory here, and it made him nervous.

He sat down and opened the kit again, retrieving the burn salve. Applying it wouldn’t be an issue, even without a mirror. He was familiar with every crease, scar and line in his own body. Hours spent in front of a glassy reflection pane had seen to that. Hours searching for a reason, searching for understanding why he was cursed to bear the crimson swill that coursed through his veins.

He shook his head and popped the cap off the tube of salve, and squeezed a dollop into his hand. A strained grunt forced its way out between gritted teeth as he slathered it on his face and the salve went to work dissolving contaminants and speeding up the natural healing process. One of the bomb technicians in his flaysquad had once told him that the salve actually contained countless tiny organisms that consumed dirt and other foreign particles, and excreted the healing chemicals. Tarfus had told her to shut her mouth and stick to blowing things up; the last thing needed was his squad’s sapper telling him that his burn cream contained little bugs that crapped all over him.

He finished rubbing the salve onto his face and moved on to his forearms. He was lucky the Guardemolishers had seen fit to leave him his clothing after throwing him on top of the transport. If he’d been shirtless, this would have been twice as unpleasant. And, best of all, he was going to have to unwrap his wrist to get at the burns there. And then rewrap it. Again. He wished he’d thought his plan through a little further before charging forth. On the other hand, Stratet had always said that while everything was always clearer in hindsight, worrying about past failures was also likely to get you killed while you were busy staring at your ass. He sighed and brought his wrist to his mouth. A jerk of his head, and a fang slit the bandage open. He slowly removed the gauze from around his wrist, wincing as the still-fresh bandage stuck to the partially coagulated wound. The salve burned as it covered the areas around the wound and sparks shot up his spine straight into his thinkpan when the salve worked its way into the wound. The stuff was effective and thorough, but numbing agents had never even been considered in its creation. As a result, it burned like mad whenever it encountered open wounds.

The salve would take time to dry, and until then it wouldn’t do to rewrap the wound. He finished by rubbing the rest of the concoction onto his neck and other arm. He sighed as relief finally registered in the frayed nerves of his face and neck. The salve may not have any painkilling properties to speak of, but as it went to work healing his burns, Tarfus swore his skin already felt several degrees cooler. That was enough for him.

While the salve was drying, he finally took off the damned stupid impractical robe and struggled into the uniform’s pants. He sighed in relief at the familiar feel of the rough canvas. It was amazing how vulnerable he’d felt in that stupid, gossamer-thin robe. He ran his fingers along his upper body, feeling for bruises, cuts and broken bones. Surprisingly, the largest cut was from the guard’s spear in the Grand Highblood’s chamber and, shockingly, he found no broken bones. More bruises than he liked, but those wouldn’t leave any lasting damage or hamper him much.

His face was another story. What wasn’t burned was bruised, and what wasn’t bruised or burned was cut. If the tenderness was any indication, he had two black eyes—it was a wonder nobody had spotted the odd color of the bruising or the cuts. Still, if fifteen sweeps of life had taught him anything, it was that people saw what they wanted to see. Unless they saw him bleeding actual shockingly-crimson blood, they often ignored any oddness in the color of his wounds. A trick of the light, they would think, maroon doesn’t come in that color. Probably just dried weird, scabs don’t look like that.

Ah, blissful ignorance. It suited him well enough. Plain sight was often the most effective place to hide, and Tarfus was if not a master of the craft, then at the very least a promising apprentice.

His probing fingers didn’t find any open wounds on his head. He looked like he’d gotten in a fight with a lawnring cutting device and narrowly won, but upon reflection, that would actually serve his purpose very soon.

The salve on his wrist was dry enough. He rewrapped his wrist, and put on the black shirt and uniform jacket, buttoning up the latter. He stood up and slipped his left arm back into his makeshift sling. He felt naked without a sickle at his belt, but the simple change of clothing did wonders for his sense of security. _Now_ he could move without the fear of a stray desk corner and some flimsy fabric revealing his secret. For the first time in nearly a week, he’d had time to gather his thoughts, recover and prepare. And now, it was time to find the location a certain Royal Mathematician’s respiteblock and work on getting some answers.

He marched out of his block and found his way to the servant’s access halls again. With his supposed blood color on display again, he’d draw less attention in here. A maroon openly walking the halls of the Empress’ compound was conspicuous, and he wanted to avoid further notice at least until he found Almesian. It was a short trip through the cramped lightless corridors and stairways back to the hallway outside Royal Historian’s office. Best of all, no one paid him a second glance this time. Perfect. He was going to enjoy this.

The door to Lucida’s office crashed open, revealing a startled Historian half-hidden behind mounds of paperwork and folders.

“I nearly forgot,” he said, “I have something of yours.” He tossed the medical kit onto Lucida’s desk where it bounced. “You know, I’m shocked. Thought you’d come chasing after me, desperate to record the freaky mutant’s existence for posterity. I guess ‘historian’ really is as pansy-assed a profession as it sounds.”

Lucida rolled her eyes. “For your information mister ‘freaky mutant’, I have a lot of documents to sort through, and not a lot of time for your self-deprecating histrionics, historically significant as they may be.” She paused. “Besides, I had a feeling you’d come back.”

“Really? How the fuck’d you know that?”

Lucida flashed him a wide smile. “The voices of the dead told me to expect you.”

Tarfus stared, nonplussed. “Okay, that’s the sort of cryptic nonsense bullshit I’m just going to ignore. Look, I came to make a deal; can we just get straight to the point?”

“Very well. What do you propose?”

Tarfus clenched his jaw. This plan had been fantastic until his thinkpan had caught up and informed him just how moronic it was. As usual, he overrode its opinion and soldiered on. “Simple. I need information, and I think you have it. In exchange, I let you interview me, or study me, or whatever the hell it is you do.”

Lucida stood up and turned to the window behind her desk. Tarfus’ eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Not a soldier then—they would never turn their back on anyone if they could help it. He filed that thought away and paid attention to what Lucida was saying.

“Historians typically deal with the past; things that have already happened, that we can be objective about,” she began, slowly. “And normally, I wouldn’t agree to something like this because of that. But,” she said, turning back to Tarfus, staring him directly in the eyes. “Both the whispers of the dead and my own instincts tell me that something is coming. Your appearance here cannot be a coincidence. I intend to record whatever happens, so I’m going to hold you to your promise. But right now, I don’t have time. So in exchange for your word, you’ll have your information.”

“My word? How do you know I’ll keep it?”

“Because,” Lucida said, smiling again, “If you don’t, I __will find you, Mister Depinza.”

A chill ran through Tarfus’ veins. He hadn’t told anyone his name, much less her. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He demanded.

“Merely that if you fail to keep your promise, I will hunt you down and slowly dismember you through telekinesis. Nothing more.”

Tarfus snorted. “That all? Hell, I’ve heard worse. You’ve got yourself a deal, Historian. Now,” he said, all business again, “I need to know where I can find Almesian Lybnis.”

Surprise registered on Lucida’s face. “Is that it? I expected something more…monumental. Especially with the sort of information you’re using to barter.”

Tarfus shrugged, scowl deepening. “What can I say, I’m an inscrutable douchebag. Now are you gonna tell me what I need to know or not?”

“Of course. Almesian has a block on the twelfth floor. We’re on the eighth floor now. He’s in number one twenty-six.”

Tarfus nodded and left Lucida’s office without another word. She sighed in disgust, waved her hand and shut the door telekinetically behind him.

Tarfus walked quickly, as if he could escape the increasing pressure of his thoughts. He had dodged the question when she’d asked, but he had the sense of a gathering storm as well. He didn’t have psychic aid to reinforce his hunch, but being a soldier for over six sweeps had instilled him with certain instincts, and all of his were abuzz. Something big was on the horizon, and he had a feeling that he was going to be right in the middle of it.

He hadn’t just offered Lucida the chance to record him in the history books because he’d needed information on Lybnis. Granted, it was a useful side effect, but he could have just as easily offered something else; her life, not breaking all her bones, that sort of thing. He was a generous kind of guy. In truth, he’d been a soldier for too many sweeps not to know what was coming. Lucida was younger than him, and likely hadn’t spent much time in any combat-oriented capacity in her military service. She didn’t have his soldier’s senses. He’d seen enough convergences of events, gatherings of power, whatever you called them to know how they ended; hemochromatic rivers, though the earthy reds browns and yellows invariably outnumbered the teals, blues and indigos.

Tarfus was already living on borrowed time. When he went out, he wanted to be remembered. What better way than to make nice with the person who decided what ended up in the history books?

So wrapped up in thought was he, that as Tarfus entered the servants’ passages again he failed to check the corners for hidden threats. A shadow detached itself and quietly followed Tarfus. Just as he was reaching for the door to the main hallways it pounced, smashing him over the head. The world went black and Tarfus went down.

**

Tarfus awoke with a start and lashed out reflexively. A flash of pain lanced through his left arm and straight up into his thinkpan. He bit back a gasp, and jerked upright, opening his eyes. His blind flailing had smashed his injured wrist into a wall to his left. He groaned and looked to the right. Sitting behind a desk considerably more ornate than Lucida’s was a troll staring at Tarfus over a pair of glasses. The other troll stood up and moved to Tarfus’ side. Tarfus sprang forward, but the other troll dodged sideways and tackled Tarfus to the ground. Tarfus’ tried to kick out, but the other troll had his legs pinned, a forearm to his throat and a thumb to his injured wrist.

“I was only going to say hello,” the other troll grunted.

Tarfus moved grab the other troll with his free hand, but the other troll pressed his thumb down. Stars exploded behind Tarfus’ eyelids and he reconsidered fighting back for the moment. “Didn’t…you know? This is how…I greet people,” he wheezed out. He focused on the face of the troll holding him down. Male, mid-spectrum blueblood, no defining scars, probably working some cushy administrative role for the Empress, and oddly familiar. “Wait…I know you. You were the one from earlier…in the hall.”

“Ah, good. I was afraid I might have grabbed the wrong person. Though…” The other troll looked at his bloodstained red thumb and grinned. “I think this just about proves it.”

Tarfus glanced at the other troll’s thumb and groaned. Yet another person in this damnable place who knew his secret. He was getting careless. He weighed his options. He was injured, sore, tired, and pinned. This was getting to be much too common an occurrence. Time for an attempt at diplomacy. “…what do you want? If it’s my life, you’re too late, that belongs in all but deed to someone else already.”

The other troll levered himself off of Tarfus. “A spiritual death, then? Impressive and difficult; I’d love to meet whoever’s responsible.”

Tarfus laughed. “Hah! I’m sure you would. Now: what. The fuck. Do you want.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

Tarfus stood up carefully, eyeing the other troll, wary of any further attacks. It’d be just his luck for the proposition to be something absurd like “an easy death”.

“What?”

The other troll spread his arms wide. “A way out. In exchange for your cooperation, I’ll get you out of here, safe and sound.”

Tarfus narrowed his eyes. “And why the hell should I believe you?”

The other troll pulled out a small circular badge and Tarfus’ eyes widened. Inscribed on it was a Cancer symbol in every color of the hemospectrum, bordered by bright red on a black background.

Tarfus knew that insignia.

It had been the symbol of his revolutionaries.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelations beget further mystery.

Tarfus stilled, hardly daring to breathe, while his mind raced in circles. _How…?_

How had this man he’d never met gotten one of those badges? How was it possible that any still existed after the disastrous attack on the Imperial palace had failed so miserably? Surely the Empress would have sent the subjuggalators, or even her own guardemolishers to raid the hive they’d been using as a base of operations? All of the others were dead; he was sure of it. How then, was it possible that a badge had not only survived, but made its way into the possession of a mysterious blueblood in a little over a night?

Unless…

One of his revolutionaries, a yellowblood named Atenor had been the source of a significant portion of their funding. He’d always said that he had connections in high places. Tarfus had always refrained from asking further; the less he knew, the safer he was. That way if he was captured, his inevitable and excruciating torture at the hands of the subjuggalators wouldn’t reveal vital information.

Was it possible that this troll was Atenor’s mysterious benefactor? Tarfus had explicitly forbidden anyone from handing out those “idiotic fucking merit badges” to anyone else. He had nearly beheaded the person responsible for their creation when he found out about them. Everybody else had liked the idea though, so he’d scowled and let it pass. It was entirely possible that Atenor had given a badge to his blueblood friend with the deep pockets.

If so, it was almost too good to be true. He was surrounded on all sides by enemies, and suddenly here was this wealthy savior out of the blue wielding proof of his supposed loyalty, willing to offer Tarfus some nebulous promise of safety.

It _was_ too good to be true, wasn’t it…

There was no way the other troll had just spotted Tarfus on a whim and put two and two together. It was just too convenient. He must have been looking for him earlier in the hall, or someone like him. He’d gotten close so he could get a good look at Tarfus’ injuries to confirm a suspicion.  
 _  
Beware those who seek to gain your trust…_

The Empress’ words echoed through Tarfus’ head. But what if she had anticipated something like this? What if it was her plan to make him suspicious, to alienate him from those who would seek to help him? But this was crazy; handing over a badge was one thing, but he would’ve known if Atenor had revealed their plot. Tarfus had known every member of his little band inside and out; Atenor had never been a very good liar, and he trusted him completely.

 _The same way you trusted Auva?_ whispered a little voice in the back of his mind.

“Where did you get this?” Tarfus demanded.

The other troll’s smile was full of smug derision. “Oh, now you’re interested aren’t you? I’m willing to bet that you’d give an arm to find out where I—hrngk!”

Tarfus’ patience for long, self-important diatribes had run out approximately yesternight; he expressed his frustration by exploding off the floor and wrapping his good hand around the other troll’s throat. This served the dual purpose of injuring the other troll and shutting him up.

“I have had the shittiest week,” Tarfus snarled, “So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to loosen my grip around your chitinous windhole, and you’re going to answer my questions. If I hear anything come out of your speaking orifice that doesn’t sound like an answer, I start breaking bones. Understand?!” Tarfus punctuated his shout with a squeeze around the other troll’s neck.

The other troll scrabbled useless at Tarfus’ hand for a moment, but Tarfus ignored it. Finally, the other troll nodded.

“Good. Now first of all, what’s your name, you hideous nookstench?” Tarfus relaxed his grip fractionally.

“C-Corvus,” he wheezed.

“Corvus. That is the worst name I’ve ever heard, and I’m sorry I have to pollute my mouth by saying it. Second question; why did you kidnap me?”

“D-didn’t kidnap,” Corvus gasped.

Tarfus sighed and threw Corvus to the ground before driving the full weight of his body behind his knees and into Corvus’ gut. Corvus had been mid-gasp and exhaled explosively. Tarfus straddled Corvus’s torso, then calmly reached over and grabbed one of his fingers. With a jerk, it snapped and Corvus convulsed, uttering a breathy groan of pain.

“I told you: answers, or there’ll be more broken bones. Why. Did. You. Kidnap me,” Tarfus said, returning his hand to Corvus’ throat.

Corvus’ eyes darted back and forth frantically, refusing to meet Tarfus’ gaze. Tarfus squeezed again and he squeaked. “Okay! Was…ordered!”

“By who?”

“D-don’t know. Always get…anonymous orders b-by cryptogrub.”

Tarfus muttered a curse under his breath. Cryptogrubs were cutting edge biotech and, in his opinion, utter idiocy. He’d field-tested early versions of them in the threshecutioners and had not been impressed. Cryptogrubs were produced in pairs, each individual part of a matched set. Each grub was capable of recording a message, encoding it, and then laying an egg containing the encoded message. The message could then only be played back if fed to its twin, which would digest the egg and repeat the message. Tarfus had hated them. They were irritating to use, suffered from poor audio quality and were, quite frankly, a bitch to keep alive. And really, whose bright idea had it been to make sensitive messages play back audibly? They had quickly been deemed a failure and his legion had returned to more traditional methods.

But it appeared that the grubs had found a market in the pompous upper class with more money than sense. Corvus was exactly the kind of person to throw money at this useless extravagance. Grasping at straws, Tarfus asked, “What did they sound like then, dammit?”

“Don’t know…masked their voice…”

Tarfus sighed in disgust, then grabbed Corvus by the hair and rammed his skull against the ground. Corvus’ struggle to remain conscious came to an abrupt end and he went limp. Tarfus stood up and checked himself. Nothing damaged, though he could feel a pounding headache coming on. He would’ve thought that all the cranial trauma he’d suffered over the sweeps would have rendered him immune by now, but he was not so fortunate.

He examined the room for anything worth stealing, reading, or destroying. He was disappointed. An immaculately clean desk, something that Tarfus always imagined was the sign of a disturbed mind. The table in the corner he’d woken up on; why did Corvus even have a table large enough to hold a troll, anyway? Other than those two objects, the room was compulsively tidy. All the drawers in the desk were locked, and Tarfus had neither the tools nor the time to break them open. Corvus probably didn’t keep anything incriminating in them anyway, much less his cryptogrub.

Tarfus crossed to the door, opened it, paused, and closed it again. He turned to Corvus and snatched the badge from his unresisting hands, gave him a kick in the ribs for good measure _then_ left the room.

He emerged into a carpeted hallway, deserted save for ornamental plinths paced within alcoves at regular intervals. The dominant color seemed to be blue—light blue walls, navy carpeting, teal accents. Tarfus guessed that he was on one of the upper floors; too blue for royalty and he didn’t feel the crushing pressure of the ocean bearing down from above.

It was a moment’s work to spot the servants’ access tucked away into a corner at the end of the hall and slip inside. He nodded absently at a troll descending the stairs and made his way to the upper floor’s landing. No stairs led further up, so either this stairwell didn’t reach the top floor, or his hunch had been right. The tiny plaque beside the door confirmed his suspicions; twelfth floor.

Inside the hall, the décor matched the intended occupants: thicker carpeting, darker shades of blue edging toward indigo, more scenes of famous battles on the walls, fewer artistic sculptures.

Tarfus did his best to ignore the scenery and focused instead on the numbers on each of the doors. What had Lucida said? One twenty-six? He was standing before number one-ten right now, so that’d put Almesian’s room at the other end of the hall. He started forward, but paused as he hard the click of a door opening down the hall. A short, heavily muscled troll emerged from the door before turning to lock it behind him. Tarfus froze as the new troll turned to face him. Painted in white on the newcomer’s face was the visage of a skull.

A laughssassin.

Tarfus kept walking, adamantly refusing to make eye contact. His vascular pump beat wildly in his chest, but he schooled his expression into the familiar soldier’s mask of indifference. He’d never had the misfortune to engage a laughssassin in combat, but he’d seen them fight. Fighting even the fiercest of enemy soldiers was far preferable to fighting one of the subjuggalators’ elite assassins. With a soldier, Tarfus at least knew what to expect; the other bastard would try to kill him while avoiding dying himself. With a laughssassin there were no such reservations about self-preservation. They would wade into the thick of battle cackling madly, their only goal to paint the ground in as many colors as they could. He’d only seen a laughssassin in action once, and that had been enough. The laughssassin had torn off his assailant’s lower jaw and then used it to gouge out the other troll’s eyes, laughing wildly the entire time. The laughssassin wore the jaw as a hat afterward. Tarfus had been a soldier for two sweeps at that point, a veteran by any reckoning, and the debacle had still unsettled him.

He gritted his teeth and continued staring straight ahead. _Don’t show fear, don’t even acknowledge him and maybe he’ll pay you the same favor._ The laughssassin wasn’t even looking at Tarfus; he was still facing the door, doing something with his key. Tarfus was five paces away; the laughssassin had stopped moving and was just staring at his door. Tarfus was just able to make out the edge of a vacant grin. Four paces. Tarfus was close enough to make out the laughssassin’s traditionally-unkempt hair out of the corner of his eye. Three paces. Two. One. He was exactly even with the laughssassin, his breath sounding explosive in his ears.

The laughssassin passed out of his peripheral vision and Tarfus heard nothing. He relaxed fractionally.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder.

Tarfus entire right arm tensed at once and his shoulders hunched ever so slightly.

“Hey, brother,” came a gravelly voice behind him, “Lend a brother a hand.”

Tarfus turned around slowly, blood pumping loudly in his ears. “What do you need?” D _o not make him angry do not make him angry do_ not _make him angry…_

The laughssassin stared at him through sleepy, half-lidded eyes for a moment before responding. “Could a brother get some directions up in here? Gotta get my supplication on before the Royalest of sisters, but I can’t seem to be remembering the way.”

Tarfus kept his face carefully schooled into an expression of intimidated diffidence. The “intimidated” part wasn’t hard to fake. Or especially faked, for that matter. “The Empress? She’s on the bottom floor. Just keep going down, you’ll know you’re at the right place when you run into a huge goddamn stairway.”

The laughssassin clapped Tarfus on the shoulder again and smiled vacantly. “Thanks, my sunset-colored brother. You maroons ain’t half bad. Great for painting the evening scenes. Even knowing where to find the ol’ Royal Fish!” The laughssassin’s eyes narrowed and were suddenly possessed by a dangerous spark of cognizance. “How would a maroon know where the Empress was anyway, brother?”

Tarfus shrugged. “Halls need cleaning everywhere,” he replied blandly.

And suddenly the laughssassin was all smiles again, and clapped Tarfus on the shoulder _again that was probably going to bruise goddammit._ “Ain’t that the truth! You been a real help my brother. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

The laughssassin stared at Tarfus for a moment longer than was comfortable before brushing past him toward the stairwell at the center of the hallway. Tarfus turned, but didn’t otherwise move until the laughssassin was out of sight. A brief shudder originating from the shoulder where the laughssassin had held him coursed through his body. “Goddammit, I hate those creepy bastards,” he muttered.

He shook himself and made his way to the end of the hall. Room 126. He knocked, and heard a crash of glass, followed by a muffled Thit! Footsteps stomped their way across floorboards toward the door. _Hardwood floor in there_ , Tarfus mused, glancing down at the plush carpet beneath his feet. _Odd._ The door flew open and Tarfus was confronted with the sight of an angry pair of bicolored glasses.

“What?!” Almesian demanded. “I will have you know that I was performing an extremely delicate procedure, which you have _ruined_ with your interruption!”

Tarfus bared his teeth in a predator’s imitation of a smile. “Lybnis. Good to see you too.” Tarfus pushed his way forward, grabbing Almesian by the collar with one hand and pushing the door shut behind him with his foot. He spun and pushed Almesian up against the now-closed door.

“I have questions, and you are going to answer me, because I have had it up to HERE with being jerked around!” Tarfus shouted.

“Sweet mercy and Mother Grub, who the hell are you, and what are you sputtering about?” Almesian said, eyes wide with surprise. After a moment, they narrowed again. “Wait just two seconds—I know you. You’re that psycho servant from earlier!”

“Got it in one, shitheel. Now: I’m running out of patience and redlining on my ‘fucking pissed off’-o-meter. I’m going to make this simple.” Tarfus jerked Almesian once for emphasis. “What the everloving rip-roaring shithive maggots insane scheme is the Empress up to?” he hissed.

Almesian stared. “What in sweet science’s name are you raving about? How the fuck should I know what the Empress is thinking? Get off of me!” He punctuated his final outburst with a literal outburst of psychic energy, blowing Tarfus backward, sending him crashing to the floor.

Tarfus swore as his injured wrist was jarred on impact, and all his bruises and aches clamored for his attention as they were swiftly introduced to the unforgiving wooden floor. He groaned and propped himself up on an elbow. That had been sloppy, forgetting about Lybnis’ psionics. He made it all the way to half-standing, half-hunching before being gripped by the collar and roughly forced upward. Tarfus was briefly amused by a bolt of déjà vu; hadn’t they just been standing like this, only reversed? He wasn’t even able to muster up the energy to be properly angry at being so easily defeated. Besides, turnabout was fair play, right?

Right. Because Tarfus gave a damn about fair. He reached up and calmly placed his good hand on Almesian’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.

Then kneed him in the groin.

A sound like air escaping from a balloon issued from Almesian’s throat as he let go of Tarfus and slowly crumpled to his knees. Tarfus stared down at the agony-stricken Almesian for a moment, panting.

“How should you know? Because _you’re sleeping with her, goddammit!_ ” he shouted.

“That’s not—” Almesian wheezed.

“Oh really? So Lucida was lying? And your atrocious coat just magically showed up one day? I already told you once, and that pissed me off enough—I am through being jerked around. You lie to me again, things won’t go so well for you.”

Almesian sucked in a breath, then coughed. “Coming on sorta strong, aren’t you?”

Tarfus rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Almesian looked away. “So Lucida told you then. Why would she tell you?”

Tarfus couldn’t believe his luck. Lucida had told him precisely nothing about Almesian—he’d been bluffing, hard. Apparently Lucida knew more about Almesian than Tarfus had hoped. Or exactly as much as he’d hoped. He would have to step carefully now, lest Almesian catch on to his bluff.

“What do you think Lybnis? It’s not hard to figure out,” Tarfus lied. “Jealousy’s a powerful motivator, after all.”

Almesian appeared to curl into himself and deflate. His shoulders slumped and his head sagged in defeat. “No…Lucida wouldn’t…she said she was okay…” he muttered.

Tarfus stared in bewilderment. He’d hoped to get the guy to drop his guard and answer his questions, but he hadn’t expected anything like this. Thinking back on it, he realized that his earlier judgment of Almesian as incredibly moody had been spot-on. _See_ , he told himself, _I’m not a horrible judge of character_.

Except when it came to certain greenblooded traitorous former co-conspirators, his thinkpan whispered. He crushed that thought back into a dark corner in his mind before it could infect the rest of his thought processes and returned to the matter at hand.

Wringing information from the sad crumpled heap of a troll in front of him.

“Now,” he said, “Spill it dirtsmear. What’s everybody’s favorite fishbitch scheming this time? And don’t tell me you don’t know—I _know_ you’ve heard something.”

“It was my fault,” Almesian murmured quietly, almost inaudibly, still staring at the floor.

“What? Speak up and make sense, asshole. You make this take much longer and I’m going to charge you by the hour.”

“It was me,” he said, voice rising in volume. “She left because she knew. It’s all my fault.”

Tarfus frowned. This guy wasn’t all there. “Hey, focus freakeyes. I give exactly zero fucks about your emotional epiphany about your ex-matesprit or whatever. Cough up the information, or you’re gonna start coughing up something a little bit more yellow.”

Almesian’s head whipped up to stare at Tarfus, and Tarfus’ eyes widened. Almesian’s eyes were glowing red and blue respectively. That was anything but good. Tarfus hated dealing with psychics on a good day, but angry psychics were the absolute worst. A calm and collected psychic was inarguably more dangerous, but an angry psychic was more likely to cause serious damage. An angry psychic would throw their power around recklessly, with no regard to personal safety or their surroundings. Any normal person with a weapon in hand would do the same thing in similar circumstances, but when the weapon at hand was mind control, or telekinesis or energy manipulation, the results were a lot…messier.

Tarfus’ last comment had apparently pushed Almesian over the edge. “You want to know what she’s up to, asshole?!” he shouted, rising to his feet. He ripped off his duochromatic glasses and flung them aside to expose his lightning wreathed-eyes.

Tarfus tried to leap to the side, but instead crashed into a rippling wall of translucent red and blue energy. He tried to throw himself backward only to run into another wall behind him. He glanced around and realized that he was in a three-sided psychic box barely large enough to contain him. The only exit was through Almesian and with his eyes flaring like that, Tarfus didn’t like his odds. He’d have to chance it.

He dove for Almesian’s legs, and was about a century too slow. Almesian’s psychically-assisted arm, driven by the entire weight of his scrawny body came down on Tarfus' back. Tarfus' chin crunched into the floor and his vision went grey at the edges. Dimly, he heard something crack. He hoped it wasn’t his jaw—waiting for a broken jaw to heal was hell.

Tarfus realized that at some point, Almesian had lifted him up and was yelling something in his face.

“…is that she’s hunting down traitors! She said she had ‘a little minnow unwittingly doing the job for her’! Happy now, asshole? Now get the hell out of my office!”

Tarfus would later wonder if it was all the recent head trauma, but as Almesian’s parting psychic blast threw him toward to the door, the only thing running through his head was _People with lisps shouldn’t say ‘office’._

Then his back hit the door and with a terrific shrieking of metal, the hinges tore free. Things broke. Not the door. It was solid, aged wood, and it laughed at simple things like a fully-grown troll hitting it with enough force to dent steel. It flew from the doorframe, and skidded down the hall with Tarfus riding atop it like a boogie-board. If the boogie-boarder were concussed, half-unconscious and upside-down, anyway.

The door quickly slid to a stop on the thick carpet and Tarfus lay still for a moment while he waited for the world to stop spinning. Then he mentally laughed to himself when he realized that wasn’t going to happen—the world was always spinning! He meant the world right around him. Not that it was actually spinning. It was just sort of swirly, sort of like…he stopped thinking and groaned. Simile was beyond his ability right now, along with rational thought. So for the time being he was just going to lie on this comfortable wooden door, and try to avoid thinking.

He drifted. He wasn’t sure how long he lay on that glorified wooden plank, or if he drifted into unconsciousness. It felt like hours passed before a throbbing, insistent ache in his left shoulder slowly drew him from his catatonic haze and back into awareness. Uncomfortable, painful awareness. He groaned—he was getting a lot of practice at that lately—and rolled onto his left side. That proved to be a bad idea as a spike of pain flared up from his shoulder and straight up in the pain-receptors of his thinkpan. The pain hosted an all-day kegger in his thinkpan’s pain receptors over the course of about three seconds. The pain was even kind enough to invite its friends, Headache and Regret. Tarfus fell onto his back once more and focused on breathing and waited for the spots in his vision to go away.

 _On the bright side,_ he thought, _I’m awake now.  
_  
He rolled over, onto his right side this time, and began the laborious process of making his way to his feet.

Again.

He was getting really tired of going through this process. For a moment, he considered just giving up and falling asleep out right here and now and to hell with the consequences.

The pros—maybe he’d stop hurting for once. He might even get some sleep not brought on by unconsciousness. And it would be so easy.

The cons—he’d probably be killed by some passing highblood.

He considered it. He really did. He was so tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of hurting. Tired of just barely keeping despair at bay by pushing ceaselessly forward. God, he was just tired.

He stood up anyway. It was literally not in his blood to give up. He’d made it out of the brooding caverns—probably, anyway. He didn’t recall being a grub, really—and he’d made it to adulthood. He’d survived for sweeps under the shadow of painful death if he’d ever been discovered. Hell, he’d even achieved a moderately successful military career as a threshecutioner right under the Empire’s nose!

His train of thought came to a screeching halt. Successful military career. Under the Empire’s nose.  
 _  
Because the Empress had been manipulating him all along.  
_  
Almesian’s words came back to him in a rush. The Empress was using him to hunt down traitors. He choked down a hysterical laugh at the irony. Using him! A known rebel of her Empire to hunt down traitors! That was why she’d kept him alive then—to use as a tool, as a plaything to manipulate and take advantage of as she saw fit.

The old familiar, soul-blackening rage rose from the depths of his vascular pump to consume him. He allowed it, using it to push the pain into a corner of his awareness. He would pay for that later when it all came back in a rush, but right now he just didn’t care.

He had a sovereign to set straight.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Outrage at Her Condescension.

Hope.

Such a simple word, for such a lofty promise. It meant surviving to see one more moonrise. It was carried on the wings of news that the supply caravan had made it through unharmed. It made soldiers fight harder, medics work faster, and the wounded heal better. Tarfus had always been amazed at the difference a little morale boost could make. From the bitter old veteran resigned to his fate to the trembling fresh recruit, the renewed vigor and fighting spirit in their eyes as good news spread through the encampment had never failed to awe him a little.

It had been hope that had lead Tarfus to attempt to overthrow the most powerful and influential troll on the planet. Hope for a better future, hope that someday he could walk the streets without fear of death if he so much as scraped an elbow. Hope that one day both he and every other troll might be judged by their individual merit, rather than the color of their blood.

Right now, it was hope that kept him trudging forward, putting one foot in front of the other. Hope that he could accomplish his goal of demanding answers from the aforementioned most powerful troll in the world.

He had no plan. He had no idea how he was going to get past her guardemolishers. He had no idea what he was going to say to her, no idea how he was going to get his answers. Such reasoning and planning was beyond him at this point. Every step he took sent a bolt of pain lancing up into his left arm, through his jawbone and into his head. Every beat of his vascular pump made his bruises throb, his wrist flare with fresh agony and his head pound. All his focus and mental concentration was dedicated to pushing his assorted aches and pains into a distant corner of his mind and keeping them there. What remained of his focus was expended simply planting one foot in front of the other and remaining upright.

He reached the end of the hallway and fumbled the door to the servants’ access open. He half-fell, half-stumbled into the darkened stairwell, where he staggered into the opposite wall and leaned against it, allowing himself a moment to catch his breath. After a moment’s rest, he slid forward, leaving his side pressed against the wall. He slithered his way down the first flight of stairs that way before wedging himself into the corner of the landing below. He took a moment to pant heavily and fight off a swelling wave of nausea threatening to crest right up his protein chute before straightening up against the wall.

This wasn’t working very well. If he was going to get to the first floor, much less get past the Empress’ guard, he was going to need something to take the edge off. He was little more than a bundle of assorted injuries held together by force of will and his clothing. He wouldn’t need long, just something to keep him lucid for long enough to fight his way in. Ten, fifteen minutes tops. Some kind of painkiller that would keep him on his feet just long enough to vent his rage at Her Condescension was all he needed.

And in a flash of inspiration, or perhaps agony-addled stupidity, it came to him. He laughed to himself; the sheer ridiculousness of his idea was too much. He completely failed to notice the stare from a passing servant.

Ten pain-filled minutes later, he fell through the door of the respiteblock he had awoken in earlier. Without bothering to shut the door behind him, he crawled over the recuperacoon in the corner and pulled himself up to the opening. He sucked in a breath before pitching headfirst into the slimy synthetic cocoon.

Slime went up his nose, into his ears and mouth. He surfaced and spat; he was aiming for pain-deadened, not stoned out of his mind. Swallowing the sopor slime would certainly calm him down, but he dimly suspected the only thing keeping him conscious right now was the rage curdling in his gut. Calm was the last thing he needed to be right now.

He allowed himself a moment to sink into the comforting slime and rest. The ooze, heated by his body’s ambient temperature seeped into his clothing and surrounded him in a comfortable layer of warmth. He sucked in a ragged breath and let it out slowly, shuddering, as the sudden lessening of pain stole his breath away. With the pain receding from his awareness, he was left, unfortunately, with lucidity. With lucidity came logic, and with logic came the dawning realization that this was a stupid, stupid plan. Luckily for the plan’s continued existence, Tarfus’ stubbornness had defeated sounder arguments in the past. The fact that the argument against the plan came from Tarfus’ own mind was immaterial. He had made a decision and he was going to _stick to it, dammit._

He grunted and looked up at the circle of light above his head and narrowed his eyes. In his current condition, there was no way he would be able to climb out. Plan B it was, then. He took a moment to gather himself before bracing his legs against the end of the recuperacoon and grabbing hold of the lip of the opening above him. He heaved his body weight to one side, and the recuperacoon’s opposite edge came off the floor. As it came back down, he rocked to the other side, and the other edge came a little further off the floor. After several repetitions of this, the recuperacoon paused, balanced precariously on an edge for a moment, before toppling on its side, spilling slime and one slime-covered, sputtering troll everywhere.

He crawled out of the recuperacoon and stood up, wincing. His arm and jaw were still sending jolts of agony through his body every few seconds, but the sopor slime’s pain-deadening properties had reduced the pain to manageable levels. He could only hope that the effects didn’t wear off too soon. Sopor slime wasn’t really intended to be used as a painkiller as far as he knew, and what he was doing right now went far beyond simple field improvisation—it was just desperate, and kind of sad. If he survived long enough to make his interview with Lucida later, he would be sure to edit this particular part out of his life’s story.

There was one more thing he needed to take care of before going to confront Her Condescension; a weapon. As he struggled to think of where in the compound he’d be able to find something suitable, he stumbled forward, knocking the stool by the door aside. He heard something tumble from the stool to the ground with a metallic clatter and looked down, frowning. Then his mouth dropped open in shock at what he’d knocked off the stool.

It was a threshecutioner’s sickle.

And it wasn’t just any old battered piece of trash standard-issue sickle either. It was _his_ sickle. The one he’d plucked from Stratet’s nerveless fingers moments after she’d died that day four sweeps ago. He’d kept it in fanatically good condition since then. Its daily polishing and upkeep had become a familiar ritual to the soldiers in his squad.

And it was here.

He’d lost it when he’d been captured at the Imperial palace, taken from him by his captors. The fact that anyone had bothered to recover it shocked him. The fact that it was being returned to him at all positively floored him.

Something on the floor fluttered slightly with the motion of his leg. It was a note. He picked it up and read it.  
 _  
Apologies for the delay in the return of your weapon. Better it arrive late than not at all. Make good use of it._

There was no signature, but Tarfus had a feeling that this particular gift hadn’t originated with the Empress. She didn’t strike him as the type to apologize for anything. Nor would she see fit to gift him with his weapon—something he had attached an unusual amount of sentimental value to. He had refused to grieve for Stratet's death. Instead, he had honored her memory by treating her weapon with the care and respect it deserved, and being the best damn soldier he could be. Even if he hated it, even if his newly-instated commanding officer had been incapable and arrogant and deadly in his ignorance.

Tarfus shook his head to clear the cobwebs from his memory. The sopor slime was affecting his focus, and he needed to stay sharp. He picked up the sickle and closed his eyes and smiled at the familiar weight in his hand. It was reassuring in a way that had nothing to do with the sharp steel he wielded. Without a weapon, he had felt naked and vulnerable. Now that he had one—and not just any old weapon, his weapon—he felt certain of a chance at victory. Not certain of victory, never certain of that. But now that he had a weapon in his hand, he had a chance, and that was more than he truthfully thought he'd had before.

He gave the sickle a few practice swings and nodded happily as it cut through the air effortlessly in the familiar motions of both death and defense. He tucked it into his belt and gave himself a once-over.

Slime-covered, torn uniform. Shooting pains down his entire left arm, rendering it nearly useless. A distant ache in his jaw that worried him, and he knew would become debilitating as soon as the sopor slime's painkilling effects wore off. A distant throbbing behind his ocular spheres in time with his vascular pump's beat that set his various aches and pains set to a tempo of discomfort. Physically, he was in no condition to do much of anything.

But mentally, the rage at the Empress' manipulation was entirely undiminished.

That would have to do.

He stalked out, ready to deliver either justice or vengeance. He wasn't sure which was more appropriate at this point, and didn't really care.

He ducked back into the servants' access again. He didn't think they'd go all the way to the first floor where the Empress resided, but the lower he could get without detection, the better. He was, he admitted to himself, barely in any condition to fight. He had no idea how he planned on handling four guardemolishers in his condition. Not to mention the fact that he'd likely be fighting two at a time. Oh well, he would tear that bridge apart when he came to it.

Even in the darkness of the access stairways, he drew stares from the passing servants. Green slime dripped from the edges of his clothing, and he walked with a pronounced limp. A murderous scowl was perched on his features, and none of the passers-by wanted anything to do with it, lest he direct it at them. They knew when a storm was brewing, and kept their heads down and hurried past him, never making eye contact. Tarfus grimaced. These browbeaten, lowblooded servants were the sort of people his uprising had been meant to liberate. Or so Auva had seemed to think; he'd always shrugged when the others had asked him __Why? and said that he was just sick of hiding, and killing the moronic fucking hemospectrum was the best way to be free.

Never mind the fact that there were hundreds of easier ways to live free, never mind the fact that it set his blood boiling whenever he saw a lowblood mistreated for no reason other than whatever unfortunate color their lifeblood had been shaded. He'd just done that because he _hated seeing those highblooded bastards getting their jollies fucking around with people, all right? Get off my goddamn case._

He found himself on the bottommost landing of the stairwell, and hesitated. Once he entered the hall, there was no backing out. It was almost certain that he would run across guards, and there was no way that his appearance would go unremarked-upon. And in his experience, guards' remarks about armed, sopored-out lowbloods shambling around the halls tended to be awfully cutting. Mostly literally, but occasionally figuratively if one of the guards had been blessed with more than a handful of thinkpan-cells. Fortunately, this was not often the case, and Tarfus intended to use this to his advantage.

Still. He could back out now. Go back to his respiteblock. Curl up in his now-empty recuperacoon and sleep until he stopped hurting.

He pushed open the door. If he ran away and waited for all his pain to disappear, he'd never leave that block again.

With an effort, he schooled his features into an expression of worried urgency, and affected a heavy limp while clutching his side with one hand. Given the severity of his actual injuries, it didn't take a career in Trollywood to look the part. He found himself in what he took to be an underwater hallway, given the lack of windows and the increased presence of those damned aqualamps. The shifting light and shadows thrown off by the aqualamps played hell with his peripherals, and it took every ounce of his frayed self-control to avoid jumping at every flicker of motion.

He limped his way toward the first pair of guards he saw, making sure to look both injured and important. He stopped in front of them, panting and doubled over. He took a moment to make sure he had their attention before looking up and making eye contact with the closest guard. Tarfus mentally exulted when he saw that the guard was a navy-blue blood, clearly new. His eyes were wide as he took in Tarfus' injuries, and his hand shook slightly where it clutched his spear.

Perfect.

Tarfus made a show of gasping for breath before forcing out, “Message...for the Empress! Report...from Eastern Eleventh Legion...they've been pushed back over the river!”

The other guard, older and more suspicious frowned at Tarfus. “They've been forced across the river? But that's miles away from their front lines. How come you're the first we've heard of this?”

Tarfus bared his teeth at the other guard. “Why...the fuck do you think I can barely breathe? It barely happened an hour ago.”

The other guard relented slightly. “All right...let's see some identification, then.”

Tarfus slowly straightened up and pushed himself into the older guard's face. “You fucking obstructive moron, I don't have it. You know why? Because I got ambushed coming back. You think all these injuries,” he said, holding his arms out and looking down at himself, “Are for decoration? If I don't get a message to the Empress right the fuck now, we may very well have an enemy army camping out on our front steps by tomorrow evening. You want to be responsible for that?”

The older guard grimaced and paled. “Fine. But we accompany you.”

Tarfus jabbed a finger at the other guard. “Leave Quivers here. Somebody needs to man the post, and he looks like he'll pass out if he tries to move.” The other guard glared at Tarfus but said nothing. Tarfus diplomatically ignored him and started forward. The older guard scurried to keep up.

Tarfus took long strides and prayed his body didn't give out before he had a chance to make it all the way to the Empress' chambers. One of his legs shook violently with every step he took and it was a struggle to keep his vision from blurring.

“This way,” the guard said, leading Tarfus through a series of turns.

He struggled to hold the layout in his mind in case he needed to escape after this was over. Left, right, right, left again, down the main hall and toward a doorway that took him onto a large staircase. The same wall-to-wall staircase he had originally descended to end up in front of the Empress' chambers, in fact. It appeared that doorways lining the walls of the staircase led deeper into the complex. He had missed that fact on his first journey down the staircase, and was now several feet away from the staircase, still in the hallway. He leaned against a wall panting, and his guide turned to look at him scornfully.

Tarfus looked up at his guide and beckoned him over breathlessly. “Need...need a hand here...”

The guard scowled and turned back to assist Tarfus. When he bent down to extend his hand, Tarfus whipped out his sickle and buried the tip in the guard's throat. The guard thrashed and made piteous whistling sounds, but was unable to scream properly—Tarfus' strike had pierced his windpipe. Tarfus whipped his sickle out through the side of the guard's neck, spilling cerulean ichor on the floor and dragging the guard to the ground with the force of the movement. He landed with a thud, and thrashed weakly for a moment before stilling, a puddle of indigo slowly widening around him.

Tarfus frowned, wiping his sickle on the guard's shirt before resheathing it. He hadn't meant for that to be so messy. There was no way he'd be able to remain incognito with nigh-royal purple blood on his clothing. Looked like he would be fighting his way through no matter what. Still, it was worth the risk—the chance he would be exposed before the guardemolishers was too high to assume any other outcome. When that happened, the guard would have just been another opponent in a fair fight. Tarfus hated fair fights. They had a nasty habit of giving the other guy a shot at winning. He was pushing his luck as it was—he knew he would have to take on at least two guardemolishers simultaneously. Adding another enemy to the mix was asking for more than just trouble.

After a moment's hesitation, he shoved the body into a darkened corner near the doorway and made his way onto the grand staircase. With any luck, it wouldn't be discovered for at least a few minutes. Even when it was, it may take longer for anybody to care enough to send up a cry. He doubted any of the lowblooded servants owed any of the highblooded guards favors. It wouldn't surprise him that they would turn a blind eye toward a particularly purple corpse. It wouldn't mean much, but the extra time the indifference brought on by class disparity could mean the difference between life and death.

He began descending the staircase heavily, making judicious use of the banister along the near wall. He didn't _feel_ hurt enough to need to lean on them as heavily as he was, but he knew just how much the sopor slime was dulling his sensations right now. Just because he didn't feel like it was necessary didn't mean he'd fall into the trap of not actually feeling it necessary.

So he climbed down the staircase, hand over hand, putting one foot in front of the other, and finally made his way to the landing at the bottom, where a pair of guardemolishers waited for him.

For a long moment, no one spoke. Then, without looking at either guardemolisher, Tarfus casually drew his sickle. He tossed it up and down in his hand a few times, still avoiding looking entirely at either guardemolisher. Finally, when the silence had grown thick and oppressive, he looked up, and locked eyes with one of the other trolls. He received a flat stare in reply, completely devoid of emotion, and forcibly repressed a shiver. The guard earlier had been suspicious, uncertain and panicky. There was no such uncertainty to be exploited here—the troll in front of him would kill him if Tarfus offered violence, or if the Empress ordered it. Full stop, no question about it. Tarfus had rarely run into that sort of fanatical devotion, and it unsettled him.

Still, he had to try. He may have been covered in blood, slime, and who knew what else, but that didn’t mean peace was completely out of the question. Just that it was very, very far away from the question. Possibly to the point where binoculars were required to spot it. He clenched his jaw and said, “I’m here to see the Empress. Are you two gonna tell Pupa-Dee and Pupa-Dum behind that door to let me through, or am I going to have to go through you myself?”

Neither guardemolisher responded, save for a slight narrowing of their eyes. Their hands already rested on the hafts of their sickles, ready to draw the instant Tarfus made a move in their direction.

Tarfus sighed. “Hey look, this is my surprised face,” he said, his expression not changing at all. “Oh well. Round two nookwhiffers. Let's go,” he said, stepping forward, sickle held in front of him. Both 'demolishers drew their sickles, but did not move otherwise. Tarfus shrugged. “Yep, didn’t really expect you waterboys to so much as piss without the Empress’ say-so. Worth a try though,” he said, showing his teeth.

The ‘demolishers narrowed their eyes further, and Tarfus hid a grin by lowering his head and charging, sickle-point held forward. He met the ‘demolisher on the right with a peal of metal on metal as the ‘demolisher parried. The ‘demolisher had reversed his weapon such that the concave edge faced outward, turning it from an offensive, piercing weapon, into a defensive, slashing one. Tarfus grunted, and reminded himself that it wouldn’t pay to underestimate these two. They were members of the elite guard for a reason.

Tarfus’ blade was swept aside, and his opponent brought his own sickle whistling toward Tarfus’ chest. Tarfus stepped back and crouched, catching a thin slash along his ribs, and barely avoided being scalped by the second ‘demolisher. While crouched, Tarfus reversed his grip on his sickle and buried the point in the boot sole of the ‘demolisher on the right. With a savage grunt, he straightened, pulling the ‘demolisher’s leg out from underneath him. To Tarfus’ dismay, the ‘demolisher did not fall backward in a heap, but bent his other knee and landed with a leg and a hand underneath him. Tarfus was forced backward by the swinging sickle of the other ‘demolisher. He blocked desperately, and the two blades locked. Tarfus found himself locked in a struggle of strength as the ‘demolisher leaned his body into the push, attempting to overbalance Tarfus. Tarfus fought back, planted his feet and locked his arms. The sharpened curve of the ‘demolisher’s sickle edged inexorably closer and Tarfus realized he had made a potentially fatal mistake.

He had been fighting under the assumption that he was actually in fighting condition. The sopor slime’s painkilling properties had filled him with a sense of confidence that was proving to be false, as his now-wavering arm attested. Slowly, inch by inch, the ‘demolisher’s blade approached his face. Tarfus knew that if he lost another inch, he’d lose whatever leverage he had, and the ‘demolisher would be able to flip the sickle out of his hand with ease. He was in trouble, and desperately needed a way to back out. It was times like these that he was glad that he’d been taught hand-to-hand combat by Kulath Stratet, rather than any other soldier. He’d learned a great deal of unorthodox techniques for dealing with every kind of combat situation. He mentally prepared himself to pull an advanced technique from his arsenal, and with reckless abandon, let it fly.

He kicked the ‘demolisher in the shin, hard, and threw himself backward as the ‘demolisher let off the pressure for a split second. He landed flat on his back and the air whooshed out his breathing sacs. Time seemed to slow and Tarfus was able to count the individual beats of his vascular pump.

 _Thump-thump._

 _Thump-thump._

 _Thump-thump._

With the sound of distant crashing of the surf growing in his auricular spongeclots, Tarfus found sounds muffled. He got an elbow underneath him, and then another, and began pushing himself upward. But something went wrong somewhere along the line. It felt like an axe had buried itself in his forehead and then been set alight before being doused in acid. The pain robbed him of his senses, and his vision whited out—

—and he found himself lying in the dust of the training field of six sweeps ago. Stratet stood above him, an avenging demon silhouetted and backlit by the burning glare of the sun. A hot trickle of blood ran down his forehead and her sickle swept toward him. He knew she would pull the attack, sweep it aside at the last second to slam into the dirt bare millimeters from his head. All the same, he couldn’t stop himself from lifting an arm up in a futile gesture of defense—

—then he was back on the spotless floor of the underwater compound, only now it was a guardemolisher’s sickle speeding toward him. A guardemolisher who would not pull his punches, and would not take pity on the poor, pathetic, fallen mutant-blood. Tarfus raised his left arm up in a futile gesture of defense.

 _Snicker-snack_ went the sickle as it parted flesh from bone, and bone from body. Tarfus fell back and his head gently thumped against the tiled floor. The pain came slowly, and from far away, like the rising tide before sweeping in and washing away his consciousness in a tsunami of agony. The last things he heard before blacking out were his hand, now parted from his body, thumping wetly into the tile, and a distant female voice.

 _Sounds familiar,_ he thought, and then knew no more.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Incorporeal confrontations, needles and thread.

Ebb and flow.

Wax and wane.

Rise and fall.

Most things in life followed a cycle of some sort. The trick was discovering the natural rhythm of things, and learning its patterns and nuances until one could safely live in harmony with it.

Pain, for example. It came in bursts and waves of agony, building and building and building until finally it crested, curled, and crashed down, burying a person with its weight. And then it faded away, only for the cycle to repeat itself.

A fresh wave of hurt rolled over Tarfus, rousing him gradually from a troubled slumber. The agony built slowly, centering around his left wrist as a dull ache. As he emerged further into consciousness, little trills and arpeggios of pain flared their way down from his wrist to his shoulders. His eyes remained closed, and he gritted his teeth and focused on breathing. Pain robbed you of your sense of time—there was only this one single excruciating moment, where each second lived was fresh victory, followed by fresh torture.

And then, a sharp sliver of pain in his other arm, followed by gradual, blissful oblivion. The simple absence of pain left him shuddering with relief and slowly, his muscles relaxed.

He slipped back into unconsciousness, and the cycle began anew.

**

“Get up, soldier,” came a voice, harsh and grating. It made the larvaskin drums that had apparently taken up residence inside his skull thrum in sympathy. As a result, his skull thrummed in agony.

He groaned and pried his eyelids apart. Blurry shapes above him slowly resolved into the form of Kulath Stratet’s scowling face.

“You just gonna sleep all night? Little flesh wound like that?” She growled.

Tarfus grunted softly and let his eyes slip closed.

Stratet’s voice softened. “Good. If you thought you could just shake that off like nothing had happened, I’d kick your ass from here to the pink moon. One of the very first things I taught you. Remember what it is?” She said, pausing for a moment. “Of course you do, you thick-headed idiot. Know your limits. Ignore them at your own peril. Perils like losing a hand.”

Tarfus heard the soft rustling of fabric as Stratet leaned forward, and he felt his arm lifted up. He cracked his eyes open once more to find Stratet holding his hand with her own. Her left hand—the one that, along with her arm, had been torn off long before she’d met Tarfus. With it, she was holding Tarfus’ left hand. The one so recently cut off. Both her arm and his hand were ethereal and transparent.

“Looks like you forgot that lesson yesternight. You damned stubborn fool. I told you, time and time again, one night sheer hard-headedness and defiance wasn’t going to carry the day. And now here you are. Your merry little band is dead and gone, you’re missing a hand and at best a guest at the Empress’ displeasure. At worst, a prisoner dancing to her tune.” Stratet paused for a long moment before continuing, “You’re down, but not out Depinza. I know you well enough to know that you can spring back from this. Don’t let me down. I’ll be watching. Now rest, you need it if you intend to live long enough to get revenge.”

Tarfus’ open eye had slipped shut at some point during Stratet’s monologue and he felt her set his hand back down. He heard her stand up and slowly, his awareness slipped away once more.

**

“I must admit to some surprise. Your assault on my chambers was an unexpected surprise this quickly, even coming from you, threshecutioner."

Tarfus pried his eyelids open once more. Standing above him was the Empress, hands clasped imperiously behind her back. He twitched involuntarily as his weapon hand reached for the sickle that was no longer at his belt.

“Despite your crippling, you persist in your fury. Why? What is it that you find so compelling about me, that you turn the whole of your focus toward killing me?” She turned away and took a step toward some light source Tarfus could not see. “Surely you are aware that I am not the creator of the hemospectrum. Indeed, I am hardly even its enforcer.” The Empress turned and took a step in the opposite direction. “I employ a maroon-blood as my archivist. A yellow-blood as my chief researcher.”

Tarfus felt the beginnings of a frown working its way onto his face.

“And yet, when I met you I made my stance on the hemospectrum very clear. “Blood will out”, I said. Words are one thing, and yet the evidence is another. There is something interesting in that, don’t you think? I believe there would be wisdom in ruminating upon it.” She turned to face him again, and nodded. “Threshecutioner.”

Blackness stole in from the edges of Tarfus’ vision as the Empress’ footsteps faded away.

**

Tarfus awoke for the third time to a distant, flaring pain in his left wrist. It was as though the pain was behind a cottony wall that muffled everything; he was aware of its existence, but it was bearable. He felt a thin tugging on his wrist, and the pain intensified slightly.

He winced and found the strength to mumble, “So what, are you the third undead apparition of idiocy? Idiocy Future, maybe?”

He heard a sharp intake of breath above him, and whatever was tugging on his wrist jerked slightly, making his head swim with pain for a moment. When the stars and colors faded from the inside of his eyelids and he could hear again, he cracked his eyes open. The block was mercifully dim, and he could make out a blurry silhouette sitting above him, holding his wrist in one hand, and something slender and silvery in the other.

“I did not think you would be awake already. My apologies,” the figure said.

Tarfus frowned, as he recognized that voice. “What the fuck? Madris? What in her hideous Condescension’s brinesucking spiracles are you doing here?”

Auva returned to what she was doing, and pulled the needle taut, sending another muted flare of pain through Tarfus’ wrist. “I am attending to your injuries, of course.”

Tarfus winced and scowled. “Where the fuck did you get the painkillers anyway? Those are reserved for highbloods and the brass only,” he said.

Auva fixed him with a level stare. “Recall my profession and employer for a moment, if you would.”

Tarfus looked away with a grimace. “Yeah, I guess with connections like that, it wouldn’t be hard to get your hands on…wait a minute.” Tarfus looked back and Auva, glaring. “You mean all those times you stitched me back together before, you could have actually done it _with_ painkillers? Why in the name of the brooding cavern’s filthy slime pits didn’t you, goddammit?”

“Do you not think that would’ve been rather conspicuous? An otherwise-unremarkable jade-blood negotiaterror possessing drugs reserved exclusively for high-ranking members of the military and aristocracy?” Auva said without pausing in her work.

“Shit, I would’ve assumed you’d stolen it. Maybe Atenor’s blue-blooded “benefactor” smuggled them into our stores and I didn’t notice or something. Wouldn’t have been the first time.”

Auva stopped at her work, and looked away, eyes downcast. “Perhaps I could have eased some of your pain. My apologies.”

There was a long silence, punctuated only by Tarfus occasionally gritting his teeth or swearing under his breath, and Auva’s steady hand working at closing the wound. Finally, Auva leaned back, surveyed her work, tied off the stitching and cut the trailing edge. She began gathering up her tools.

After a long silence, "How the hell did you ever make it as a spy, Madris?" Tarfus said, finally.

Auva paused, staring down. "It was easy, for a long time. I was able to convince myself that what I was doing was for the good of the empire. All my previous work had been to destabilize and sabotage groups that were working toward toppling our civilization. You…wanted to make it better. You were…inspiring. Convincing."

Tarfus looked away bitterly. "Not fucking convincing enough.”

"But you were," she insisted. "Why do you think you're still alive?"

He snorted, shoulders jerking up and down with the violence of it. "Because the Empress is a sick bitch that enjoys watching things bend until they break. I’m her rebellious little plaything, to fuck around with as she pleases until she’s bored with me. I’m dead, my body just doesn’t know it yet."

"No," she said even more quietly. "She originally planned to let you die. It was only at my behest that she let you live. I told her that you were no threat alone. She agreed."

Tarfus looked Auva straight in the eyes, and she recoiled at the depth of the defeat she saw in them. "Aren't I?” He sighed, and paused. “What was it you said when we first met? ‘Death for the sake of death’…?"

Auva closed her eyes. “’Death for the sake of death seems like a needless waste to me’. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Yeah? What happened to that when you sold us out?”

Auva sucked in a shuddering breath and slowly let it out. “What would you say if I told you I believed our comrades’ deaths served a greater purpose?”

“I’d ask you if you really believed that,” he murmured. “ _Then_ I’d kick your ass for daring to count yourself among the others. Then I’d ask you what the fuck could possibly justify betraying us like that. Betraying me.”

"I told the Empress that you were no threat alone. She agreed. I neglected to tell her that you wouldn’t be alone," she said, and pulled something ovaloid out her shirtsleeve. She held it up and Tarfus' eyes widened.

It was the revolutionaries' insignia; Tarfus' symbol in every color of the hemospectrum on a black background bordered by bright red.

"Long live the revolution, sir," she whispered.

Like a burrowing parasite, it made its way into the darkest corners of the furthest reaches, and turned up in the most unexpected places at the most surprising moments. It was an insidious, tempting emotion that Tarfus’ vascular pump, caked in grimy layers of cynicism though it was, was unable to completely suppress.

Hope.

And it was because of hope that Tarfus’ next works came out choked and bitter. “No. No, Auva just…it doesn’t fucking work like that, not even for you. I’m done,” he said, voice hitching. “I’m done being jerked around by high-minded highbloods who think they know what’s best and fold me into their neat little schemes and move me around like a little fucking toy who’s only purpose is to smile, nod, and walk to my goddamn fucking death. I won’t do it any more, not even for you.”

Auva closed her eyes, and Tarfus could see her clenching her teeth. She wouldn’t cry, that Tarfus knew. She would’ve already prepared herself for this eventuality, and would have rationalized and reasoned it out. She would clench her jaw, and squeeze her eyes shut, and nod.

And Tarfus hated it.

“You know,” he croaked, “You know I was waxing pale for you? That entire two sweep stretch we were fighting for our lives. Probably even before that. I probably would’ve asked within a perigree. You were always the calm one. When I was out of my mind with rage at some idiot’s retarded fuckup, you were there with the plan, and the way out. You listened to me when I had to vent about the idiocy of the morons we had to hire to stay undetected. You were my moirail in all but name.

“And then you went and _fucked it all up_. So no, Auva Madris, you do not get to flash my idiotic little insignia at me and call everything nub-skippingly fine.”

Once he finished speaking, Tarfus looked away, and stared at the ceiling. His expression hadn’t changed throughout his entire monologue. Rage, Auva knew how to handle. Frustration, she was an old hand at. Self-loathing, she could soothe. But this dead, defeated despair had shaken her.

She sucked in a breath and held it for a moment. “Yes sir,” she whispered, her words catching.

She turned away from him and left the block. Tarfus continued staring at the ceiling, even when he heard the distinctive sound of a single, rattling breath coming from the doorway before Auva was able to stifle it.

He lay there for a long time. Sleep never came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, wow. At the time of this posting, this story has well over 100 kudos. That means that over 100 people have liked my little story well enough to take a moment to go "Hey, this is pretty cool." I think that's an important milestone! So, thanks for reading everybody. I'd just like you to know that it makes my day every time I get a new notification in my inbox that lets me know somebody has enjoyed my writing. Warm fuzzies all around. Keep reading, and I'll keep writing!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reawakening, refueling, and finally, bewilderment.

Tarfus awoke.

Which was strange, because he didn’t recall falling asleep. His eyes shot open and darted around for an instant, before he remembered where he was.

Still in the Empress’ compound. Still in the same dirty recuperacoon, suffering from the same screaming pain in his left wrist. It was considerably _less_ muffled pain now that whatever drugs Auva had been pumping into him had worn off. He groaned, and turned the thousand-pound weight attached to his neck that his head had apparently turned into to take stock of his injuries. All he could see lying down at this angle was his wrist, elevated by a sling suspended from a slender metal pole rising from the side of the recuperacoon. He attempted to lift his head up to get a better view of the rest of his body. His neck twitched gamely, and succeeded in raising his head an inch or two from the inclined surface of the recuperacoon before shuddering mightily and giving in. His head thumped back against the slimy surface beneath him, sending stars and throbbing pain racing through his cranial thinkpan case.

“Fuck,” He groaned. Getting out of this thing was going to be one hell of a job, he realized. No time like three seconds ago to get started on it.

He would just…rest a little. Marshal his strength. Maybe just close his ocular orbs for a moment…

He started awake some time later. He glanced at the window and cursed when he saw the shades were drawn and the room was aglow with diffuse sunlight. So much for resting his eyes. A thin dagger of sunlight pierced the gap between sunshade and window, and the floor it rested upon was steaming gently. Tarfus stared for a moment before shaking his head and slapping himself in the face.

 _Wake up,_ he thought. _Middle of the day is perfect right now, no one else will be awake._

He groaned and drew his legs underneath him before standing up. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his right hand and reached to the recuperacoon’s edge with his left to steady himself. A sharp burst of pain rocketed up his wrist and he reflexively cringed and clutched his left arm to his chest. Hissing in pain, he looked down to see what was wrong with his hand.

 _Oh right,_ he thought. _It’s gone._

A wave of vertigo washed over him and, having learned from his previous mistake, he grabbed the edge of the recuperacoon with his _right_ hand this time.

 _Food,_ he thought as his digestive sac rumbled. _I need food._

Grimacing at the motion, he turned around and sat down on the edge of the recuperacoon. He braced himself by holding on with his right hand and slowly swung his legs out of the ‘coon’s sleeping chamber. He clenched his eyes shut and ground his teeth together as his tortured muscles sang twin melodies of soreness and stiffness, but persevered until they were free. He let his legs drop to the floor and slid onto them, panting.

Now for the hard part; walking. He leaned his full weight onto his legs, and cursed as one gave out and sent him crashing to the floor. Reflexively, he tried to stop his fall with his hands, and jerked when agony coursed through his stump. The elbow on his good arm cracked into the floor, and he rolled onto his side, shivering.

 _Get it through your goddamn thinkpan,_ he thought savagely. _You don’t have a left hand anymore._

He shook his head and got to his feet again. The slime coating his naked body had picked up all sorts of dirt from the floor. His wrist was throbbing fiercely and weeping a thin stream of blood. He curled his lip in disgust and tried to ignore the pain while looking about the room. Unless he was much mistaken, it was the same room he had awoken in earlier. The slime that had covered the floor after he’d drained the recuperacoon was suspiciously absent, but the layout was the same, and all his meager possessions were here. The uniform he’d worn earlier, already looking the worse for wear with sickle slashes and blood spatters covering it. He winced as he noticed the left sleeve was shorter than the right. The other uniform he’d taken from the laundry block was next to it, resting atop a clean towel. And on top of the fresh uniform, was a colorful disc of some kind.

He walked over to the table with his uniforms atop it and scowled when he realized the disc was one of his revolutionary insignias. He rifled through the pockets of the dirty uniform, and came up with the insignia he’d taken from Corvus. Auva must have left the other one. He shook his head, and toweled himself off before dressing. He snarled and cursed at the uniform’s buttons as he struggled to do them one-handed, and eventually succeeded. He picked up the two insignias he’d set aside and tossed them up and down in his hand thoughtfully for a moment before pocketing them both. Who knew, maybe he’d find some fanatical anti-Imperial sap here that he could recruit.

He chuckled darkly before crossing to the door. On the stool beside it were his boots and his (freshly-cleaned, he noted with some surprise) sickle. He shrugged, stuffed his feet into his boots and shoved his sickle through his belt. He refused to think about the implications of his sickle being returned in pristine condition after what he’d done. If he did, he’d be forced to confront the fact that he had twice now attempted to assault the Empress and wasn’t even imprisoned, much less being horribly tortured at the hands of the infilterrogators.

His current situation was certainly preferable. But it also confounding, probably unprecedented, and much, much better than simply being handed off to the subjuggalators. Tarfus shuddered. Those creepy, clowny bastards terrified him on some gut level he wasn’t able to entirely explain. He’d heard stories about what happened to their prisoners, and had precisely zero desire to learn the truth behind the rumors firsthand.

…and that was why he didn’t want to think about his situation. It got his thinkpan tied in knots, and he just wasn’t prepared to put up with that sort of shit before he’d gotten a hot meal inside himself.

Clamping down on his whirling thoughts with a snarl, he donned the rest of his clothing and stumped out of what he was beginning to think of as his block, and into the hallway. As he suspected, there was nobody about, and even with the curtains drawn on the thin, high-set windows, the light was nearly blinding. Squinting, he felt his way along the wall until he found the slightly-recessed rectangle that marked the entrance to the servants’ passages. He fumbled the door open clumsily and staggered inside, glad for the sudden, pervasive gloom. He shut the door behind him and as his eyes adjusted, found the stairways no less trafficked than normal. Clothes always needed washing, papers always needed fetching, and blocks always needed scouring after all.

Tarfus made his way down the stairs on a hunch, ignoring the strange looks he got, glaring at those who stopped and stared too long. He knew it was a stupid idea, and that rumors would spread of a one-handed madman with too-red eyes, but he didn’t care anymore. Maybe a little infamy would even be good for him.

He made his way to the floor he remembered finding the laundry block on, and decided to take a moment to read the signs posted at hallway intersections. He’d disdained them before out of impatience, but at the moment, he had no desire to walk any further than he absolutely had to.

After a moment’s consultation of the signs on the wall, he swung a right. His hunch had paid off, and the kitchens were in fact on this level. If he was lucky there’d even be some sort of servants’ nutrient consumption block. Failing that, he’d just beat the chefs until they relented and gave him food.

He followed the smell of cooking and burst through a pair of swinging doors, fully prepared to break some heads in order to get his hands— _Hand,_ he corrected himself—on some food, when he stopped dead.

Well.

At least he’d found out why none of the servants he’d seen so far had had lusii accompanying them.

They were all in here, cooking.

It certainly wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever seen. That time he and his squad had broken in on a brownblood and his kismesis…roleplaying…still held that dubious distinction. But this, this was still pretty strange. The monstrous menagerie bustling back and forth somehow managed to avoid getting snagged on the others’ various limbs, claws, wings or viscous acidic effluvia. The ease with which they avoided each other spoke of long practice doing so, and it baffled Tarfus. He’d never seen, much less imagined that lusii could work together in such a manner. If he’d known, the things he could’ve done with his squad’s lusii…

He shook his head. That was neither here nor there. He moved forward and reached forward to lift the lid off the nearest thing that smelled appetizing—or tried to. His hand was slapped aside by a giant scorpion-lusus’ tail. He glared at the lusus, bemused, as it jabbed a claw, pointing to Tarfus’ right. He saw a doorway leading to a small block, in which a few bleary-eyed servants were lined up, trays in hand. Tarfus blinked once, before shrugging and joining the back of the line. No sense arguing with the creature armed with giant claws for hands and a tail tipped with a venomous stinger.

After several minutes of shuffling forward and studiously ignoring any and all furtive glances directed his way, he somehow found himself with a tray of delicious-smelling slop. He made his way to a table, and dug in with gusto. After a spoonful or two, he stopped to taste the food he was eating, and frowned.

 _I should’ve been an imperial servant,_ he thought, _This is way better than the shit they gave us grunts._

Somebody sat down across from Tarfus with a tray of their own. He ignored them, and kept his eyes down, intent on satisfying his ravenous hunger. He stubbornly refused to meet the other’s gaze until he had finished every probably-nonfatal bite of his meal. Once he had licked the bowl and spoon clean, he looked up.

“Look, if you’re not gonna eat that, you sh—” , he began before stopping abruptly. His glare intensified. “Madris. Th’ fuck are you doing here?”

Auva’s visage remained placid, as she took a dainty bite of the food on her tray, before making a face and putting her spoon back down. “The Empress requests your presence in one hour at front entrance to the compound.”

Tarfus sputtered. “What the fuck? Why?!”

Auva looked away. “I’m afraid I cannot say.”

Tarfus’ glared. “Can’t? Or won’t?”

Auva looked up and met his eyes. “Yes.”

She then stood up without a further word, turned, and left.

Tarfus’ glare slowly morphed into a pensive frown. Just what had he found himself entangled in?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very sorry for the delay. Between the ancestor update playing utter havoc with my planned outline, school, then midterms, I've had a hard time finding both time _and_ motivation to write. Luckily for you folks, I seem to have gotten my feet under me again.  
>  I won't be so confident to tell you to expect regular updates, but with any luck, they should be more frequent then they have been as of late.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long, uncomfortable ride.

Roughly an hour later, Tarfus lounged in a gloomy corner underneath the eaves of compound’s façade, waiting. He’d positioned himself with his back to a wall and so that any observer from the stairs or the entrance to the compound would be blinded by the setting sun. Old habits died hard, and paranoia was a virtue when one’s only potential friends were in the employ of one’s worst enemy.

Tarfus grimaced. His stump was hurting, and the lingering effects of a full belly and the sopor slime had worn off. All his aches and pains were back with a vengeance. His entire left side felt as though it were one massive bruise. Breathing hurt, and walking wasn’t particularly pleasant either, but he would manage. He’d had worse.

It wasn’t just his ever-expanding collection of agonies that had him in a foul mood, though. It was the thought of the Empress ordering him around like her little toy soldier. The worst part was, he had no choice but to obey. Instead of brooding on his current helplessness, he tried to order his thoughts.

When he had arrived at the compound, bruised burned and bloodied, it had been early evening. Upon awaking after his meeting with the Empress, it had been just past evening, probably an hour or two before midnight. Then…he frowned. His recollection of events was blurred after that. He remembered the fight with the two guardemolishers with eerie clarity, however. The sensation of that sickle slicing his hand off was one he would never forget. He shook his head and shivered. On the bright side, he no longer had to worry about the hole the Empress had carved through his wrist. That was something, he supposed.

At some point after that, he had awoken to Auva tending to his wrist, and it had still been night, or at least early morning. When he had awoken again an hour ago, it had been late morning, verging on midday. His frown redoubled. Had he really only been in that hellish compound for just under a day? It had felt like weeks.

So…in under a day, he’d attempted to assault the Empress twice, lost a hand, alienated one of his oldest, and apparently traitorous friends and, confusingly, discovered a complete stranger carrying his revolutionary insignia.

He blinked. Where had that last thought come from? He hadn’t paid Corvus and his insignia much thought since knocking the fool out. But it was troubling, wasn’t it? The way a complete stranger had access to what had been a supposedly well-kept secret up until a quarter-perigree ago or so…. It implied that security in his little organization had not been what he thought it was. Which meant…

…what?

Did it really matter now that the entire conspiracy was, save for himself and Auva, dead and gone?

He sighed. Maybe not. And maybe he was thinking about all this to prevent himself from dreading just what terrible fate the Empress had in mind for him.

And then a hand clapped him on the left shoulder and his elbow whipped out in a purely reflexive action. It collided with the owner of the offending hand with a fleshy whumpf and a whoosh of air rushing from their oxygen-processing sacs. Tarfus turned to find a familiar blueblood doubled over, clutching his middle.

“Oh,” he said, comprehension dawning. “It’s you.”

It was Corvus. He stood, wheezing for a moment before slowly straightening. “What do you have against me, freak?”

Tarfus shrugged. “You’re a cowardly shitbag as well as a complete fucking toolbox. What’s not to dislike?” He paused for a moment before adding as an afterthought, “Oh, and you snuck up behind me. Bad move on a good night.” Tarfus leaned in close. “Does it look like I’m having a good night?”

“It’s not even night, you psychopath,” Corvus growled.

Tarfus blinked lazily before looking out at long shadows and orange illumination of the sun as if seeing them for the first time “Oh. Another reason to be pissed off. Fan-goddamn-tastic.” He turned back to Corvus. “Is there something you want?”

Corvus scowled. “Yes. Follow me. I’m to be your escort—we’re departing soon.” With that, he turned and stomped down the stairs to the courtyard in front of the compound.

A courtyard, Tarfus noted, that was now filled with idling automated combustion platforms. Cars, he corrected himself. If he was going to be among highblood company for the foreseeable future, best to attempt to blend in by using their vernacular.

He snorted. Blend in. With a missing hand, and no clear purpose as to his presence. That’d work. And he doubted he’d able to hide his eye color for long. In the past, he’d always just been able to shrug and pretend it was a light maroon. People rarely had time or incentive to question that answer. If they did, he either punched them out or made allies out of them. It had worked surprisingly well.

Tarfus followed Corvus to the cars and waited as Corvus opened a hatch in the side and conferred with somebody within. After a moment, Corvus turned to Tarfus, and gestured him inside. Tarfus obliged and blinked as Corvus shut the hatch behind him and his eyes adjusted to the comfortable darkness inside. He surveyed the interior; a simple box with two benches at either side and two hatches likewise perpendicular. Behind and above the bench to Tarfus’ left was a small, sliding door at eye level, presumably for contact with the driver. And sitting on that bench…

Tarfus felt his vascular pump pause in shock, along with the rest of his body. Then, it resumed its duty in exasperation. Along with the rest of his body.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said, before he was able to stop himself.

Sitting on the bench to his left was the Empress, trident held lightly on one hand, with Auva seated to her side, hands folded demurely in her lap.

The Empress gestured at the bench opposite. “Take a seat, threshecutioner. We’re to depart soon, and I’d rather not have you flailing all over the cab when your balance inevitably deserts you.”

Tarfus scowled, but took a seat. She had a point, after all. He opened his mouth to speak, but the Empress cut him off with a raised hand. “I have little time. I imagine you have many questions. Once the journey starts, I will be unable to answer them. Think carefully.”

Tarfus snapped his mouth shut, deepened his scowl, and thought furiously. His mind raced frantically through a litany of possible things to ask…

…for a split second. Because when he got right down to it, there was only one question he could bear to ask.

“What the _fuck_?!” He burst out. “You’ve been jerking me around like I’m a retarded, drooling woofbeast, and now you expect me to sit down and have a polite discussion like I’m one of your nooksucking, bulge-licking, nub-glubbing sycophants? _Fuck that!_ Give me some damn answers!”

The Empress stared at him placidly for a moment before glancing at Auva. “I am impressed infilterrogator. He reacted as you predicted, almost to the word.”

One of Tarfus’ eyes twitched. Then the other. Then he saw red. He clenched his fist, grit his teeth and focused on his breathing. It took every scrap of his frayed willpower not to launch himself out of his seat and throttle that imperial _bitch_ where she sat. After several long moments of blinding rage, he took a deep breath and let it out. It hurt. “So,” he spat, “Are you going to answer my question?”

The Empress turned back to Tarfus and furrowed her brow slightly for a moment. “You presume too much with your tone. I will have your head on the ramparts if you speak to me so again.” She paused for a moment before continuing, “With that said, I will answer your question as time and practicality allow.” She adjusted her trident so it was lying across her lap, the tines angled subtly toward Tarfus. “Your failed revolution came at a singularly inopportune moment, ineffective and aborted though it was. My decision to allow its continued survival was wholly intentional. However, the way its existence came to light—rather violently,” she said, pausing and staring at Tarfus before continuing, “—was not. As a result, the subjuggalators are now aware of what they believe was a nearly-successful revolutionary cell. Something they perceive as a weakness, which they intend to exploit. You, threshecutioner, are part of my plan to teach them a lesson in humility,” the Empress finished, continuing to hold Tarfus’ gaze.

Tarfus stared, mouth open. “…you’re fucking serious, aren’t you.” He stared for a moment longer before continuing, “You’re grubshit insane if you think I’m going to have any part of some heavy-handed power play of yours. What possible motivation could I have for going along with your scheme?”

The Empress gestured carelessly with one hand toward Auva and said, “Her life, of course.”

Tarfus’ eyes narrowed and he surged out of his seat and raised his hand to pound the Empress into paste. “You _bitch!_ You murderous, barnacle-breathing squid-sh—”

He was abruptly cut off as the Empress’ trident darted out in a blur of flashing gold and pinned his neck to the back of the car, catching it between the tines. Tarfus’ chin was forced up, and he stared down at the Empress along the length of the golden weapon.

She matched his gaze and said calmly, “I suggest you consider your next actions very carefully.”

The Empress stared at him levelly, for several long moments. Tarfus noted the way her knees bent, the way her gills flared, the utter calm in her flat, violet-pink eyes as she prepared to kill him if he made a single false move. The way Auva stared on apparently dispassionately, save for the tiny tells; one hand clutching the other slightly too tightly. The way one fang dimpled her lower lip just slightly more than it should. If not for those, Tarfus would have thought her the epitome of statuesque calm.

For her sake, Tarfus didn’t move.

If it had just been him and the Empress…well. He would’ve taken his chances.

He smiled ruefully. “If this isn’t one hell of a microcosm for the way our Mother Grubforsaken society works, then I don’t know what is,” he said, letting his shoulders and arms relax.

The Empress waited a moment before withdrawing her trident. Tarfus collapsed and gasped, before sinking back into his seat. The Empress continued staring at Tarfus for a moment before nodding and turning around. “That concludes my time for you, threshecutioner. Pray you have not squandered it.”

With that, she reached toward the front of the car, and grasped the back of the bench to Auva’s side and pulled. It swung open on a hinge, revealing an opening, with just a half-wall with the tiny sliding door above it. The Empress swung that out as well, leaving a small doorway leading to the driver’s cab. She walked through and swung the doors shut behind her. They closed, and were followed by a click.

 _Must lock from the other side,_ Tarfus thought. _Smart. Would make her look weak in front of dumber, more confident enemies. But still, smart._

Tarfus sat back in the seat, and started slightly as the car coughed once, then rumbled to life. He twitched the curtain aside from the window and squinted in the light, watching as the courtyard of the compound began to roll away. He watched for a moment longer, before moving the curtain back and sitting heavily on the bench.

 _Fucking ridiculous. To think that only four sweeps ago, steam-powered ships were a recent development. Now we’ve got these preposterous self-propelled psychic-powered contraptions. And before my contact network got smashed to bits, we’d started hearing rumblings of the Empress taking her expansionism to the stars…as if she needs more power. Isn’t ruling over an entire planet more than enough?_ Tarfus frowned, and his eyes widened fractionally as a thought occurred to him. _What if her power’s not as secure as we think? Is that what all this nonsense with the subjuggalators is about?_

“Madris,” he said, voice tinged with an edge of suspicion, “Are we on the verge of a goddamned civil war?”

Auva winced, and covered it poorly with a cough. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you dare play this game too! Do you mean to tell me that that entire rambling self-indulgent, ridiculous diatribe just now, and everything before it, was supposed to inform poor clueless me that the subjuggalators are prepared to metaphorically tear out the throat of the _fucking Empress?!_ ”

Auva frowned, and said nothing.

Tarfus stared, mouth agape. “How in the name of my useless nubby horns did I miss this? This is huge! Bigger than…than…”

“Your ego?” Auva cut in, smiling slightly. Then her eyes widened and she winced, blushing.

Tarfus glared. “Fuck you,” He said, punctuating each word with a wild gesticulation, “My ego is completely warranted. I am an amazing leader and deserve respect…” He trailed off as his amputated hand came into his field of view, then turned away, scowling.

The only sounds in the car were the nearly-inaudible whine from the telekinetically powered propulsion drive, the crunch of dirt and gravel beneath the tires, and the creaking of the benches under the two of them. Tarfus sighed and focused on the insistent throbbing in his stump. Occupying his mind with controlling the pain would give him an excuse to avoid conversation for the foreseeable future.

It worked for a time. Tarfus wasn’t sure how much time passed. It could have been minutes, it might have been hours. As he sat, focusing on the pain in his body, learning it, mastering it and overcoming it, his perception of time was nonexistent. He’d once had someone comment that what he was doing now was akin to meditation. He’d promptly held his sickle to their throat and threatened them with decapitation if they dared relate him to something as useless and prissy as meditation.

Something must have showed in his face, because through the haze of pain, he heard Auva ask, “Is something wrong?”

Tarfus blinked and willed the grimace off his face. “Not a goddamn thing. I’m living on borrowed time. The Empress has me in her clutches, and is using me in some wild scheme to preserve a tenuous peace between highblood factions.” On second thought, he replaced the grimace on his face. “I’m like a goddamn grub in a playpen here, totally peachy.”

Auva frowned. “A grub in…what?” She shook her head, clearing the errant thought away. “You may disagree with her methods, but what the Empress is doing is important. It is necessary that the Condesce keep the peace between the subjuggalators and the rest of the populace. The alternative would be widespread bloodshed. The lowblooded would feel the effect the most. What she is doing is for the good of all.”

“Fed you that line, didn’t she?” Tarfus sneered.

Tarfus could almost hear Auva’s teeth crack and she clenched them, and spat, “For your information, no. Would you prefer the alternative? The subjuggalators and sea-dwellers fighting for control of the empire? They wouldn’t wage a quiet political battle behind closed doors. It’d be a brutal, messy and ultimately pointless bloodbath,” she grated.

“Pointless?” Tarfus demanded, “Okay, so the subjuggalators are grubshit-insane and have no business ruling anything. But how frond-waggling fuck can you call that sort of upheaval ‘pointless’?”

Auva looked toward the curtain and sighed, her fingers twitching. “You are aware of the Empress’ lusus, yes?” Tarfus arched an eyebrow and nodded. “Well,” Auva continued, “Then you are aware that it is capable of wiping out every single person on the planet should it go unfed for more than a single day or two?”

Tarfus stared, speechless for a long moment before managing to sputter, “You’re shitting me. Couldn’t somebody else just feed the damn thing?”

Auva grimaced. “Yes. In fact, that’s what happens most of the time. The issue at hand, is that nobody knows what will happen if the Empress is killed and there is no heir to take her place. Will her lusus refuse to eat? Will it immediately bellow with rage, killing us all instantly? Will things continue as they are?”

Tarfus stared at Auva for a moment longer before running his hand through his hair wildly. “Shit. Fuck. And I tried to kill her. Holy shit.” He thumped heavily against the back of the bench, and his vision swam for a moment. “You’re telling me that if we’d pulled it off, we may have condemned the entire species to extinction?”

Auva let out a heavy breath. “Yes. There was very little chance of that happening due to my intervention—” Tarfus scowled, “—but the possibility existed, yes.”

“Sweet Mother Grub, I’m a retard,” Tarfus muttered. “Can’t somebody just tell the subjuggalators that if they off the Empress, we’re probably all fucking doomed?”

Auva raised a delicately arched eyebrow. “And do you believe that would deter them? The subjuggalators are barely-sane brutes by most standards. The Grand Highblood would likely refer to it as a ‘miracle’, or some other preposterous quasi-religious nonsense,” she said dismissively.

“So now we’re going to the Highblood’s seat of power where the Empress is going to…do something…to shut them down before they have a chance to openly challenge her?” Tarfus said, more to himself than anything else.

Auva shook her head. “I don’t know what she plans to do. She’s frustratingly inscrutable at the best of times,” she said.

“Boo-hoo, you,” Tarfus said, “You have to decode the Empress’ mysterious whims all night.”

A strange look crossed Auva’s face as she turned away, before being replaced with her usual stoic placidness. For an instant she had looked sad, even regretful. She opened her mouth to speak but cut herself off as the car’s rumbling abruptly died down. The Empress emerged from the front of the car, and shut the bench-door behind her. Tarfus noted she still had that damned trident in one hand.

She sat down. “We’ve arrived,” she said simply.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arrival, politics, and reunion.

Tarfus glared at the Empress for a moment on principle before sweeping the curtain away from the car's window. He blinked and squinted. 

Well, shit.

Before he could accurately estimate the numbers of the gathered crowd, a hand on his shoulder yanked him away from the window and pulled the curtain shut again. Tarfus spun around, fist cocked and ready to fly before he checked the motion. Auva was holding him, her eyes wide. He dropped his fist and relaxed, prompting her to do likewise. The Empress regarded the two of them coolly, expression betraying nothing.

“You cannot risk being seen closely. If any of the highbloods are able to identify your eye color, it may very well incite a riot,” she said.

Tarfus stared at her for a moment, his mouth working soundlessly before bursting out, “How the hell could any of them possibly see my eye color? They're way the fuck down on the ground, not even close to this damn thing!”

Auva sighed, mouth thinning into a severe line of irritation. “When the Empress makes an appearance anywhere, there are snipers watching from every angle, and even some photographers,” she said.

Tarfus raised an eyebrow. “Who the fuck cares if her snipers and media lapdogs can see us? They wouldn't start a riot unless the Empress snapped her fingers.”

Auva sighed. “Not the Empress' snipers and photographers.”

Tarfus blinked, and then his mouth made an “o” of dawning comprehension. “Oh. Shit. So we’re going to get shot at the moment we step out of this thing? That’ll look fucking incredible, all sorts of dignified,” Tarfus said. “‘Oh, look at me, I’m diving out of my car and rolling behind a barrier, look how great and powerful I am!’” Tarfus continued in a mockery of the Empress’ regal tone. “Yeah,” He spat, “That’ll go over real well.”

The Empress remained silent. Auva sighed again and ran a hand through her hair, mussing it slightly. “That is precisely why we are waiting. The Condesce’s counter-snipers are identifying and neutralizing their counterparts as we speak.”

Tarfus rolled his eyes and sat down. “Politics," he spat.

There was a thump from the roof above them, prompting the occupants of the car to look up. The Empress frowned for a moment, and then shuffled several inches to one side. An instant later, a silvery blade flashed straight down through the flimsy ceiling of the car, impaling the space the Empress had occupied moments ago.

She sighed and stood up. “There’s always one,” she said, shaking her head. 

The Empress grabbed the flat of the blade with her fingertips as the would-be assassin above them attempted to free it. With a sharp tug, she jerked it back downward, and thrust her trident through the ceiling in the same motion. There was a wail, then the Empress twisted and it cut off abruptly. When the Empress pulled her trident free, the tines were stained with viscous, light green blood. She sat down and began absentmindedly cleaning her trident with a much-stained cloth retrieved from beneath her seat. “Indeed. Politics,” she drawled. 

After a moment, the Empress looked up and appeared to focus on something neither Tarfus nor Auva could hear. She narrowed her eyes briefly, and then nodded to herself. “The way is clear. Threshecutioner, you will follow a discreet distance behind the infilterrogator,” she said to Tarfus. She pulled a small huskboard box from her royal dress and handed it to Tarfus. “Inside, you will find a pair of maroon contact lenses. You will wear them.”

Tarfus took the box automatically, and without a further word, the Empress turned and opened the car’s door. He watched closely as one of her guardemolishers unfolded a retractable set of steps from the car's undercarriage for the Empress. Tarfus noted that the Empress paid her guardemolishers no mind, instead scanning the crowd. It made her appear attentive and involved, and displayed her disdain for her aides—a very effective, if subtle display of power. 

Dammit. She was good at this. She’d even thought of tinted ocular vision enhancers (he'd be damned if he would use the over-flowery high-blooded term. “Contact lenses” indeed.). He'd worn them since he was old enough for his blood color to show in his eyes, but had lost his last pair in those frantic, bloody minutes on the steps before the Imperial palace several nights ago. The set the Empress had procured would make his eyes appear maroon, like the ones he’d used before. 

Tarfus was about to take the top off the box when he paused, and looked up at Auva. “Madris. You’d tell me if these were going to dissolve my ocular spheres, or rigged to shoot a ridiculous tiny harpoon through my thorax and rip it out, right?”

Auva stared for a moment, one eyebrow raised. “I can assure you that if the Empress intended to kill you, she would have done so in a much more direct manner long before now.”

Tarfus stared hard at Auva for a moment before tearing his eyes away from hers and looking back at the box. With a grimace, he balanced the box on his left wrist and reached toward it with his good hand, half-expecting a tiny ravenous insect to leap out and attempt to devour his face. He turned his head away, squinted, and gingerly pried up one corner of the box. When nothing immediately tore his face off, he turned back toward the box, and lifted the top further.

Huh.

It contained a small plastic case with two round protrusions at either end. Ocular vision enhancer holders. Either the Empress expected him to drop his guard and flippantly open the case, only to be immediately eaten by a tiny horde of flesh-eating insects or…she was actually being genuine about this.

Tarfus thought about it for a moment, and couldn’t honestly say which outcome he expected more. With a disgusted snort, he popped the top off of one side of the case with a thumb and peered inside. 

Resting harmlessly inside was a single piece of soft, malleable plastic. They were rust-red and when worn, would make his eye color indistinguishable from that of a maroon-blood’s. 

Tarfus closed his eyes, took a deep breath and, after hesitating briefly, popped it onto his ocular sphere. He held his breath while he waited for it to begin eating away at his eyeball. After several moments of nothing happening, he let out his breath and growled at himself for being so paranoid. He put on the other contact lens with equally little happening. 

He huffed in disgust and pounded his fist against the wall of the car. He was getting tired of being completely unable to predict the Empress. A tiny voice in the back of his head nagged at him that maybe it was because he was as blind as a sonic-screechbeast, but he ignored it ferociously and looked up. 

Auva was already outside of the car and walking away. Tarfus swore and scrambled to follow, bashing his forehead against the top of the car’s open doorway in the process. He stumbled out of the car and onto the dirt, clutching his forehead and swearing. He climbed to his feet, arm splayed wide for balance and surveyed his surroundings.

Behind him, the guardemolishers were watching him stoically, and an aide was cleaning the body and blood off the top of the Empress’ car. In a line behind the Empress’ car were several other cars, disgorging occupants. Tarfus himself was standing in a cobbled driveway, clearly intended as an unloading space for the cars. He turned away from the cars and found the Imperial palace dominating the entire left side of his field of view. To his right, an enormously wide set of stairs led down to a walled, courtyard. Gathered in the courtyard was one of the largest nonmilitary crowds Tarfus had ever seen. A low rumbling was emanating from the gathered crowd. Tarfus wasn’t sure if it was a tense rumbling or an excited rumbling—he wasn’t close enough to accurately divine that.

He shook his head and realized that if he didn’t move, he was going to lose Auva to the throng of aides and officials surrounding them. She was rapidly moving away, and would soon be lost in the small crowd of guards and aides unobtrusively following the Empress. Tarfus made to follow them, when a hand landed heavily on his shoulder.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, rustbloo—” a lisping voice began from behind him.

Tarfus’ elbow whipped backward reflexively and a sharp needlepoint pain flared through the tip of it, as he felt something crunch under its impact. He whipped around and found a sputtering yellowblood wearing a hideous yellow coat, sprawled on the ground. The yellowblood was ineffectually trying to pull his ruined red-and-blue glasses off his face. Tarfus’ elbow had shattered both lenses and bent the bridge inward, and they were now stuck, pinched to the other troll’s nose. 

Tarfus stared for a moment, before shaking his head and blinking. “Lybnis? What the fuckbucket are you doing here?”

Alesmian pried the ruined mass of metal and glass shards of his nose before making a face and flinging them away. “You son of a bitch, you broke my glasses!” He lisped. 

Tarfus rolled his eyes and extended his good hand. “Call us even for the door-bashing you gave me, you moody fuck. Never grab a solider from behind.”

Almesian slapped the proffered hand away and climbed to his feet alone. “I don’t want your help, asswipe,” he spat, brushing dirt from his coat.

Tarfus smirked. “Just thought I’d repay my chauffeur with a little respect after kicking his ass. That was you getting out of the driver’s compartment, right?” Tarfus continued, his grin graduating from friendly to shit-eating in a moment, “I figured it’d be you, what with Little Miss Fishbitch loving to get into your head, use you for your abilities, that sort of thing…those four-wheeled automobiles _are_ psychically powered, right?”

Almesian’s hands curled into fists and he gritted his teeth. “Shut the fuck up,” he breathed, red and blue sparks dancing around his eyes.

Tarfus rolled his eyes and took a step toward Almesian, face inches from the other man’s. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it? You really want to try to take me surrounded by a crowd of riled up morons and edgy guards? They’d stomp us flatter than a goddamn caegar in a second flat. So rein in your flashy fucking fireworks and keep walking before the ‘demolishers decide we’re a little too lowblooded to actually be part of the party up here.” Tarfus stepped back and stared at Almesian for a moment before pointedly turning around and walking toward the Empress’ receding procession.

A moment later, Tarfus felt more than heard Almesian hurry to catch up and match his pace. Tarfus' shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. 

“Consider this a stay of execution, asswipe. I’ll get you back when I won’t get guardemolisher sickles jabbed through my spiracles for starting a fight,” Almesian snarled, staring straight ahead with narrowed eyes and a disgusted curl to his upper lip.

“I’ll sleep with one eye open just for you,” Tarfus replied with nary a trace of grin to be found. 

Almesian actually growled and clenched his fists. Tarfus made a mental note not to push him too far—he was one precarious step away from the edge at all times. He shook his head, grinning inwardly. It was much too easy to enrage the average person. He’d spent too long among soldiers and worse. That or he'd just spent too much time around _his_ soldiers. They'd either developed thick skin or tried to kill Tarfus in a fit of rage, which led to them either getting themselves killed, or in the unlikely event they survived, transferred.

Speaking of “or worse”, he was nearing the Empress’ entourage. He had already lost Auva, and Her Royal Bitchiness was nowhere to be seen. He recognized a number of miscellaneous aides, the unmistakably immobile profiles of the guardemolishers and—Tarfus grinned maliciously—Corvus. Best of all, Corvus was facing the other direction. Tarfus sped up and clapped his hand heavily on Corvus’ shoulder, barely concealing a snicker at the way the blueblood jerked.

“Would you look at that, it’s my favorite flunky,” Tarfus said, spinning Corvus around. “Where’d the Empress and her pet infilterrogator go?”

Corvus hesitated a moment before recognizing Tarfus and shrugging out from under his grip. “What—why should I help you? Even if I wanted to, I can’t be seen speaking to a mutant-bl—mmf!”

Tarfus slapped his hand across Corvus’ mouth. “Ah, ah, ah. Can’t have you blurting secrets out in public. And…” Tarfus leaned close, muttering into Corvus’ ear, “What do you think would happen if the Empress were to discover that a certain blue blood was carrying around a certain revolutionary badge? The words “culling fork” come to mind…” Tarfus leaned back, and patted Corvus’ shoulder companionably. “What’s the matter? You’re looking awfully pale,” Tarfus said, plastering a look of honest concern on his face.

Corvus’ eyes widened, and he went rigid, staring at something behind Tarfus. Tarfus’ shoulder blades began to itch and, very slowly, he turned around. Auva was standing there, her face the picture of tranquility, standing utterly motionless. She was less than a foot away, and Tarfus hadn’t even heard her approach. 

“Ah, there you are threshecutioner. And the Royal Mathematician,” She said, nodding to Almesian. “If you will kindly end your conversation with the Imperial Treasurer,” She said, turning back to the Tarfus, “The Condesce has requested your presence. Follow me,” she finished, turning and walking away without waiting for a response.

Tarfus turned back to the shaking Corvus and favored him with a raised eyebrow. “You? Imperial Treasurer? Well shit, that sure explains a hell of a lot.” Without a further word, Tarfus removed his hand from the other troll’s shoulder and turned to catch up to Auva.

When Tarfus had reached her side, she addressed him without turning to face him, speaking through clenched fangs. “I would take it as a courtesy if you did not terrorize the royal officials if at all possible. That happens to be _my_ job, and I take a certain amount of professional pride in it.”

Tarfus frowned, trying to imagine Auva in a position of power, interrogating stubborn bureaucrats, skulking in darkened halls, extracting answers—or blood—at the Empress’ command. He found that it was frighteningly easy, and suppressed a shudder and replied in spite of himself. “That bottom-of-the-bucket slurry spawn knocked me out and tried to recruit me. I think I’m justified in kicking his ass around a little. Besides he even…” Tarfus trailed off, turning slightly and spotting Almesian still skulking some distance behind them. “…Maybe I’ll tell you about it later,” he said, thinking of Corvus' badge weighing heavily in his pocket. “Now, are you going to tell me what the frond-waggling grubfuck the Empress wants me here for? You were right, she wouldn’t have bothered with the colored ocular enhancers if she planned to kill me. So what’s the goddamned deal?”

“Like I told you earlier,” Auva huffed, “I am not privy to the Empress’ plans regarding you. So you will simply have to wait and see. Now, take your position here and wait for…anything, I suppose. I have other things I need to attend to,” Auva said, pointing to an otherwise-unremarkable section of the platform enclosed by flimsy plywood walls.

Tarfus nodded, and paused for a moment to take in his surroundings once more. The confrontation with Almesian and then Corvus had left him distracted.

In front of him was a large, portable stage, assembled from rolling square sections of metal and thick, reinforced huskboard. The stage was roofed with thin plywood planks and hung with curtains at the edges to conceal the sides and the backstage area from the assembled trolls in the courtyard. To Tarfus’ right was a series of portable barricades lined with grim-faced guardemolishers, and to his left were the imposing front doors of the Imperial palace. He frowned for a moment before he realized what was so familiar about this scene. He mentally shifted his perspective several yards forward and halfway down the stairs before he realized what it was. The stage was set up at the top of the stairs, on very nearly the exact spot he and his band of revolutionaries had made their final stand. He clenched his one remaining fist and grit his teeth together so hard his temples began to ache. That _bitch_ had done it on purpose, he _knew_ she had.

He forced himself to walk calmly up the steps leading to the elevated backstage, ignoring the piercing glares the guardemolishers sent his way, marching resolutely into the gloomy, curtain-shrouded backstage area. When somebody behind him spoke, he nearly impaled them with his sickle before he realized who it was—then when he realized it was Almesian, and wondered why he’d stopped himself.

“So you don’t have any idea what you’re doing here either, rustblood?” Almesian sneered, unaware of how close he had come to death moments ago.

Tarfus blinked, momentarily confused. “What, you don’t know why you're here?”

Almesian’s glare intensified. “No, I don’t know why _you’re_ here. And after you tried to beat the shit out of me, it’d be enlightening to know why.”

Tarfus rolled his eyes. “Get over it, already. You kicked my ass, and I all I did today was break your moronic glasses. I think you still came out on…” Tarfus trailed off, as he realized that his voice sounded strangely loud in his auricular sponge clots. The murmuring of the crowd had suddenly grown silent. Tarfus walked around the dividing wall separating backstage from the wings of the stage proper and he nodded in understanding.

“What is it?” Almesian said from behind him, enmity momentarily forgotten.

“The Bitch is about to speak,” spat Tarfus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nope, not dead! Just slow. Chapters will continue to be released at a probably-glacial pace, but they'll come.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revelations, diplomacy and a sundering.

Tarfus completely ignored Almesian's presence at his side and instead focused entirely on the Empress.

She stood straight and tall on a section of the stage that extended over the stairs, forming what was essentially a balcony. She held the royal trident in her left hand, a reminder to all watching of her position and what it represented. As Tarfus glanced at the crowd, he realized that many of them had probably never seen the Empress in person before, much less her legendary Culling Fork. Most of those assembled were mid-to-lowblooded—he doubted if there was anyone higher than a green in attendance. Curious.

The Empress began speaking, and Tarfus ignored the crowd once more in favor of her. She thumped the culling fork once and the sound rang out across the courtring, a wave of silence following in its wake. The Empress gazed down at the assembled crowd, surely striking an imposing figure with the green moon casting her in a partial silhouette. Her wild mane of black hair fanned out behind her, and the razor-sharp tips of her culling fork glimmering in the lime-green luminescence made her appear every inch the lethal overlord she was. Her image inspired fear and awe, and evoked images of the evil boogie-troll that every little grubling's lusus warned them about (often by way of grunts and copious amounts of interpretation on the young troll's part.). Then she began to speak, and completed the image.

"Underlings. Servants. Scum. Unworthy," she boomed. " _Lowbloods._ This is what they call you. And this is how you are treated. As worthless as pond scum, lower than the barnacles beneath our boots."

Tarfus frowned. _Just what is she playing at?_

"There are those who advocate merely culling the lot of you. Simply removing the urchins that infest our planet, and living in a utopia of blue and violet," she continued, ignoring the angry muttering from the crowd. "Those that would end every one of you without the barest whisper of malice. No black feelings. Simply…disgust. Indifference, even."

The muttering was growing in volume. To wish an entire series of castes dead was one thing—most of those assembled wished the same of the highbloods, so the feeling was mutual. But to do so without any malice? Without any fire to the feeling? _That_ was insulting. Depraved even.

"But I? I am not so sure that such a thing would be wise. Indeed, I am not even sure it would be possible. I have watched our troops do battle. I have read the reports," she said, prompting the muttering to angle toward confusion. "Those units primarily composed of lowbloods won the most engagements with the fewest casualties. You are fierce. You are strong. You are capable."

Tarfus' frown deepened. Before he had time to work out the Empress' plot, he noticed a commotion down in the crowd. At the front, a heckler was shouting something at the Empress. The crowd was pulling away from him, not wanting to be associated with a suicidal madman.

The Empress continued, ignoring the troll shouting obscenities at the base of the stairs. "But with few exceptions, you are unrefined. Unintelligent. And often…" she raised her culling fork and held it poised, like a javelin-thrower. "…disloyal." She flung the fork.

It whistled through the air, and there was a frozen moment in time, when every eye in the crowd watched the golden fork streaking through the moonlit air. It seemed to travel for an eternity before finally impaling the heckler. It traveled straight through him and stuck in the stone floor of the courtring, quivering. The heckling troll retched once, shuddered, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he was still. The culling fork then wrenched itself out of the ground, and levitated back toward the Empress' outstretched hand. Along the way, the limp body of the heckler slid off the end landed wetly on the steps before the stage. None of the Empress' aides made a move to remove it.

The Empress reached out and delicately caught her levitating culling fork before planting it at her side once more. Tarfus saw motion out of the corner of his eye, and looked at the opposite wing of the stage. He spotted a familiar maroon-blood lurking at the rearmost edge of the stage, just barely in sight of the gathered onlookers. She was lowering her hands, and a corona of dark red energy was fading from around them. It appeared that even Lucida had come along for the show, and was dressed for the occasion. She was wearing a form-fitting black-and-green dress, and her hair was up in a bun, with two white sticks pinning it in place.

 _Son of a bitch_ , Tarfus thought, _Sea-bitch saw all that coming and planned a little sideshow. She even had Lucida dress up for it…_

After a moment's heavy silence, the Empress continued, "Such is the price of dissension. Do not misinterpret my respect as weakness or permissiveness. Those who defy the will of the Condesce will be exterminated. However, those who are loyal should be rewarded. And it is to you loyalists that I extend an offer; one of opportunity. Those who pledge their loyalty to me and swear to aid the Condesce in the eradication of any rebel factions that exist will be granted the opportunity to become anything. Blood color will be no barrier to you, should you join me. Merit alone will determine your standing amongst the ranks of this anti-rebel force. The lowliest brown-blood may rise to the top, should she prove herself worthy. The noblest blueblood may find themselves digging latrines, should they find themselves inadequate."

The crowd roared. Tarfus gaped. Was she really proposing a repeal—albeit limited and experimental—of the hemospectrum caste system? Was _that_ why she had brought him along? As an example? Now, he supposed, the only question was whether he was going to be an example of what this new task force was to be eradicating, or an example of what they could accomplish…

Tarfus' thoughts were interrupted by a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He ducked reflexively and felt a brief gust of wind whisper through his hair as something swept through the air above his head and collided with Almesian's instead. The whiny yellowblood crumpled soundlessly.

Tarfus whirled, and found himself face to face with a two-hundred pound subjuggalator towering over him with a crazed grin plastered onto his face. Tarfus dove for the subjuggalator's legs, narrowly dodging a second bone-crushing swipe of the mad troll's club. He collided with the subjuggalator's legs, and they both went down in a heap with Tarfus on top. Tarfus drove an elbow into his assailant's nose and then rolled off, using his momentum to regain his feet. The other troll ignored the violet blood streaming down his face and slowly stood, lazily eying Tarfus.

"You here to stop the miracle, aren't you brother? Here to stop me painting my masterpiece with the rarest, pinkest paint of them all?"

Auva's voice replayed in Tarfus' mind, _"The issue at hand, is that nobody knows what will happen if the Empress is killed and there is no heir to take her place."_  
  
Tarfus paled. Auva hadn't been kidding. The subjuggalators were deadly serious—or perhaps _serious_ wasn't the correct word to use with regard to any subjuggalator—about ending the Empress' reign. Towering in front of him was a trained laughssassin, one of the finest examples of the deadly and unpredictable warrior-class of the subjuggalators.

Before Tarfus had any more opportunity to size up his opponent, the subjuggalator sprang into motion, faster than anyone his size should be able to move. He swung his club with bone-crushing force at Tarfus' midsection. Tarfus flung himself backward and narrowly dodged having his ribcage caved in. He landed on his elbows, drew his sickle, and stood up in time to meet the subjuggalator's club with the edge of his blade. The impact shivered through his arm, and the sickle's blade stuck in the soft wood of the club. Tarfus quickly wrenched the sickle free before the subjuggalator used the leverage against him. Tarfus stepped back and turned sideways to present a smaller target before lashing out with his sickle. He was aiming to impale the subjuggalator's wrist and disable his weapon hand, but it was a small target, and the lanky troll was faster than he looked. He ducked inside Tarfus' swing, bringing the two nearly face-to-face. Tarfus could smell his sugar-sweetened breath, see the dilated pupils, the manic grin. The subjuggalator raised his club and swung for Tarfus' temple. Tarfus reached his left hand out to intercept and grab the other troll's wrist…and a lance of pain shot up his arm as he rammed his stump against the subjuggalator's arm. The club, only mildly slowed, proceeded to crash into Tarfus' temple.

The world lurched sideways, and the stage floor crashed into the other side of Tarfus' head. The sound of the crowd in the courtring below echoed strangely, every sound rippling, as though coming from deep underwater. His eyes struggled to refocus, and only made it halfway. Eventually, he realized he was staring at the prostrate Almesian, spots of yellow blood coloring his mouth. Then, Tarfus' view was blocked by a crazed, grinning skull.

"No time to make any miracles with your blood, brother. I've got a masterpiece to create, and you're not part of it. Yet," it said before withdrawing.

Tarfus blinked dimly at the retreating skull for a moment. It turned around and began walking away. Tarfus lay on his side, staring without moving, simply breathing while he waited for his body to recalibrate itself. Then, sound returned to normal with a rushing noise and he blinked. His thinkpan switched back on and what little adrenaline hadn't yet been expended in the fight with the subjuggalator dumped itself into his veins. He lurched unsteadily to his feet and looked up. He saw the subjuggalator stalking toward the stage, blood-spattered club held lazily in one hand.

_The Empress!_

Tarfus looked down blearily and found that he was still clutching his sickle. Good old training. _Never drop your weapon!_ she'd shouted, and he'd listened. He looked up and found that the subjuggalator had broken into a slow, loping run. Tarfus followed at a stagger, a drunkard's weaving run. His legs weren't cooperating, and the world kept tilting. He kept at it. He had to reach her in time.

Tarfus was closing on the subjuggalator. He'd always been fast, and he his balance was recovering. The subjuggalator wasn't moving very quickly, trying to delay drawing attention until the very last moment. He was going to reach him in time. He had to. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten…

…and then the light changed. They were in full view of the crowd. A collective gasp rippled through it and the Empress stopped speaking, head whipping around and body reflexively shifting into a defensive crouch.

The subjuggalator was raising his club, almost in range. Tarfus had raised his sickle too at some point, and realized he was roaring. The Empress was bringing her culling fork up to bear, but slow, too slow…

And then the subjuggalator dropped, like a marionette with its strings cut. In that one, still instant, Tarfus saw the subjuggalator fall bonelessly, almost peacefully. And in the empty space that he revealed, Tarfus looked over the Empress shoulder. Hidden in the shadowy depths backstage, hidden from the crowd behind the curtain, he saw Lucida, eyes glowing, hand extended. He saw her calmly draw the two sticks from her hair and shake it out of its bun. He saw her posture change to something more regal, more feral. In an instant, her bearing morphed from refined statue to ravenous hunter. He saw her expression morph from one of complacent boredom to one of insane, barely-repressed glee.

Then the stage exploded in a violent flash of coruscating energy, shifting wildly between red, blue, yellow and green. Tarfus felt himself flying backward, and braced himself for an impact that never came. He realized there was a vice grip locked around his wrist. He looked up and found Lucida, floating in the air, energy crackling off of her, hair floating and framing her upper torso like the furious tentacles of an eldritch god. The pupils and yellows of her eyes had entirely disappeared, hidden behind an intense, crackling glow the same shifting primary-colored hues as the energy spilling off of her. Tarfus looked down and found that they were floating several yards in the air, above the stage. Lucida was paying him no attention, staring at the audience. She waited several moments before addressing them, ensuring that everyone close enough got a good look at Tarfus' supposedly-maroon eyes.

When Lucida spoke, her voice rang and buzzed simultaneously. The pressure of her words precluded the need to raise her voice—everybody heard, whether they wanted to or not.

" _ **For the revolution**_."

The crowd cringed as one at her bone-vibrating, power-laden voice. Some cheered, most covered their ears and groaned. Tarfus was allowed neither luxury and simply grit his teeth.

Then she turned smoothly in midair, still holding Tarfus by the wrist, and pointed one of her slender sticks at the crumpled form of the Empress that lay in the middle of the stage. A beam of multicolored energy shot from the tip of the wand and arced toward the Empress... …and was absorbed by a dome of swirling blue and red energy. Bichromatic spotlights shone at Tarfus and Lucida out of the ashes of the stage. As the smoke and dust cleared, Tarfus' eyes bulged. Standing over the Empress, with feet planted wide, hands raised and fingers spread, was none other than Royal Mathematician Almesian Lybnis. Projecting from his palms was a dome of energy that encased himself and the Empress. Everything outside of the dome was a devastation of ashes and soot.

Lucida's grip tightened around Tarfus' wrist, and he looked up at her face. Her eyes were unreadable behind their multicolored mask, but her face was screwed up in an expression of frustration. She snarled and fired another sizzling arc of energy toward Almesian, and this time, she maintained it. She poured multicolored electricity into Almesian's shield, and he cried out, falling to his knees. Streams of color streaked from his eyes, psychic exhaust swirling as he strained to hold the shield.

Almesian didn't say a word, but just stared at her. Lucida, naked determination shining from his exposed eyes. Lucida grimaced, but maintained the beam. 

Tarfus meanwhile, had recovered his wits and realized that if he didn't do something, Almesian was going to be incinerated and the Empress along with him. He was hanging from Lucida's grip by his good arm, suspended in midair. He needed to break Lucida's concentration, but he couldn't reach her weapon arm, and he had no leverage.

_So, let's make some!_

Hoping that Lucida didn't intend to drop him, he swung his legs back once, and then on the forward swing, heaved them upward and inverted his body. He was now upside-down and supporting his weight entirely with his one hand clutching Lucida's wrist. He locked his ankles around her midsection and then used his legs to haul himself upward. Lucida bobbed in the air and finally seemed to notice him. She turned to him, eyes wild and sparking, just in time for his left wrist to smash into her face. Concentration broken, she jerked backward, losing several feet of altitude, and the killing beam from her wand stopped.

Almesian, who had been, psychically speaking, pushing like a man trying to hold a boulder over his head, suddenly found pushing against nothing at all. All that excess psychic energy bled off into the path of least resistance…the fading arc of scorched air and motes of multicolored light left by the remnants of Lucida's beam. Her eyes widened as it snaked from one mote of falling energy to the next, cool blue swirling with fiery red, seemingly in relentless pursuit of its master's attacker.

And then a wild-eyed Tarfus slapped the wand out of her hand with his stump.

The red and blue lightning, following the source of the energy, rather than the energy's owner, seized upon the wand and devoured it.

There was a split second of silence as Almesian's psychic energy chewed away at the wand…

…and then a sound like the screeching of a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards punctuated by an almighty echoing crack, the sound of a god's bone snapping. Just before white engulfed Tarfus' vision and unconsciousness took him once more, he saw Almesian.

Yellow tears streaking down his face, he was staring at Lucida.

And then the white devoured Tarfus and he knew no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did warn you guys in the previous update that updates would be glacial. I wasn't joking!  
> That said, this chapter gave me a LOT of trouble, because it's a big turning point in the story and, in a lot of ways, the end of the first act. Interesting stuff is ahead, I guarantee you that.  
> Thanks for reading!


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